It’s not true that marquee projects make no difference to life in Whitewater, Wisconsin. They do make a difference, just not enough to alter the high poverty and slow growth that besets our community.
Several big projects may have a comforting influence, and offer a cumulative lift, to those who use them.
Outside that orbit, though, the benefits are scarcely noticed, if at all. The same is true of town politics: a few hundred care, several hundred may participate, and the overwhelming majority abstains.
There’s rationality in that abstention – one does not participate where one feels no impact, benefit, or change.
Change of the most meaningful sort will come from America’s steady evolution, from beneficial but impersonal forces, and not from within.