One often hears that a person, seeing only parts but not the whole, cannot see the forest for the trees. With Whitewater’s old guard, something like the opposite is true: they can’t see the trees for their (odd) view of the forest.
There’s a reason for this: beyond the many thousands of capable and productive residents of Whitewater, there are a few hundred striving social climbers whose bottomless need for recognition impels them to look only to the biggest institutions of the city for approval.
One will often hear them say, for example, that Whitewater is simply the sum of its university, school district, and city government.
All three are important, but the old guard only sees these three institutions in a narrow way: as the leaders at the top of each, with whom they can ingratiate themselves and advance their own social status. That each of these institution exists only as the sum of hundreds of people – individuals all – matters less to them than the supposed prestige derived from being among their leaders’ social circle.
It’s a new man’s idea of being involved, by consorting only with people of influence, community leaders, or dignitaries (their occasional term, not mine).
They’ve almost no feel for the many hundreds or thousands who are part of these organizations, let alone still more who are residents of the city engaged in daily productive work unconnected with our schools, campus, or city government.
It’s as though someone believed that he could understand the zoology of the African savannah simply by studying a few adult, male lions.
There are some very smart leaders within each of these institutions who don’t share the old guard’s view, but there’s no one in the old guard who doesn’t seek to ingratiate himself or herself with anyone of prominence in one of these organizations.
I’ve sometimes been asked why I don’t commonly use the term ‘townies’ rather than ‘town squires,’ ‘town fathers,’ or ‘old guard.’ It’s because the first term, ‘townies,’ is nothing like the others. The thousands of average people born in the city (a ‘townie,’ I suppose) are far more capable than the few hundred I’m thinking of as ‘town squires,’ town fathers,’ or ‘old guard.’ They’re not the same groups – one is large and productive, the other is smaller, less capable, and industrious mostly in mutual admiration and social climbing.
Our small group of town squires talks almost exclusively among its own numbers (having no feel or taste for ordinary residents), and so typically misunderstands the greater community. That’s why they seem so tone-deaf, so reactionary, to anyone beyond that few hundred. They don’t see this, though, because they principally communicate among their own, and are the victims of a sad, severe selection bias. They often bolster their own most ridiculous views.
They’ve been this way for so long, they can’t even imagine other points of view.
It’s autumn in the city, but also a different, inescapable autumn for the old guard. They’re not yet finished in this town, but they’ve no demographic future, either.
A more cosmopolitan outlook, whether of the right or left, will replace their imperceptive view.