Some local proposals, in Whitewater or nearby places, look like they were designed by someone from 2004.
Some in that year assumed that local residents would support public funding for any designated purpose, that claims of job-creation would be swallowed whole, that the press would support those claims relentlessly, that press support would make a difference, and that a community would have one project, one view, and one supportive chorus.
But it’s not 2004, and it will never be 2004 again.
Ten years ago, at least to a few, there must have been a confidence that 2004 would last forever, so to speak. This ilk mistook their own imagined 2004 heydays with their communities’ needs. It’s why their statements are shopworn and stale: they’re stuck in their own past.
Look now, just ten years later: widespread rejection of public-funding for white-collar projects, legitimate scrutiny of jargon about job-creation and economic claims, a press that still flacks but without the ability to persuade more than a declining few, and communities that no longer tolerate shut-up-and-sing orthodoxies.
Those self-professed movers-and-shakers of that time didn’t think there would be an expiration date on their use of shoddy work, dodgy data, and grandiose pronouncements.
As it turns out, there is.
It’s this time.