By Morf Morford
Tacoma Daily Index
You may have heard that across America a disturbing trend has been emerging; local politicians, especially many of our nation’s mayors, are not running for re-election. (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/16/americas-mayors-covid-year-494753).
The reason is even more disturbing; our urban (and even small-town) problems have become too difficult and most of our cities, in more ways than could be counted, have become largely unmanageable.
From COVID to urban unrest to increasing levels of ever-more violent (and heavily armed) crime to the upheavals of climate change related floods, fires, droughts and heat waves, to rising levels of homelessness, cyber-attacks and ever more blatant institutional racism, accusations of racially charged law enforcement, increasingly arcane laws to restrict legitimate citizens from voting and the threats to cities have entered categories unimaginable to previous municipal leaders.
We Americans, more than most, throughout our history have had a love-hate relationship with our politicians.
Some people hang banners across their homes with names of their favorite candidates, others hang posters or chant or even threaten the ones they don’t like.
Some regions set up term limits to deter career politicians. Some politicians are cagey enough to avoid those rules. Others defy them openly.
The lack of trust, even defiance of our leaders is nearly tangible.
Mix in fanaticism, cyber vulnerability and ubiquitous automatic weapons and you have a recipe for urban uncertainty that anyone with any sense would want to avoid.
In other words, just when we need our leaders most, the one’s with the most sense choose self-preservation over public duty.
We can’t blame them of course.
The real tragedy is that every one of our seemingly overwhelming social problems was, at some point easily manageable.
Climate change had a political consensus back in the early 1990s. If not for active interference from the fossil fuel industry we could have easily diminished, if not entirely eliminated the now overwhelming and apparently irreversible, impacts of climate change.
Remember the original name for COVID-19? It was coronavirus. Coronaviruses have been studied and analyzed for more than fifteen years (that’s why the vaccination could be developed so “quickly” – it had been in development for over a decade).
We call it COVID-19, by the way, because this strain first emerged in 2019.
Other strains emerged in previous years. And new strains will certainly emerge in future years.
Homelessness first emerged as a major problem in the very early 1980s. We could have done something about it long before it became the unmanageable problem (or set of problems) that seems to beset every urban center.
In fact we did do something back then; we instituted housing (and drug related) policies that made the problem far worse. (Prohibiting those with drug convictions from most employment and housing ensured a generation, or more, of homelessness).
Immigration is an issue (and set of policies) that impacts virtually every corner of our nation and almost every industry.
From agriculture to travel to health care to hospitality and entrepreneurial ventures (among many others) immigrants drive, support and, in many ways, lead the way. (The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had a session on the many ways immigrants fuel economic growth; you can see it here: https://www.uschamber.com/live-event-experience/160123?).
You may have heard of the stages of grief;
1. Denial
2. Bargaining:
3. Depression:
4. Anger:
5. Acceptance:
These have become the de facto responses of many leaders (and most citizens) on virtually every issue.
We have been in a fog of denial for years, if not decades, on virtually every major social or political issue.
From climate change deniers to COVID and vaccine objectors, denial (if not outright avoidance) has been our go-to response to problems – at least until they affect us personally or become so overwhelmingly obvious that only a career fool would continue denying them (though we seem to have many of them).
After bungling through, like turbulent toddlers, the stages of bargaining, depression and anger (is anything a better barometer of our current political climate than the seemingly ever-present anger and incoherent rage?) Some of us (still all too few) are emerging into acceptance – which means that some are finally taking responsibility.
The cost – in budgets, national confidence and global standing – has been great.
We have become, instead of “the land of the free”, the nation with the highest rate of incarceration (by number and by percentage) of any nation in history (far more than the infamous Russian Gulags, for example).
The image of Nero fiddling while Rome was burning comes to mind. His “fiddling” was emblematic of his lack of concern, even his celebration of the destruction of parts of his own capital city.
I think of that scene when I see so many of our politicians, and many fellow citizens, living and celebrating as if there were no tomorrows. But they seem to forget that we are living in the “tomorrows” of previous generations.
And the “tomorrows” we are leaving for future generations look even worse.
We have modern buildings in major cities collapsing and citizens literally dying in their homes from the heat.
Urban problems seem to get larger and more paralyzing every day.
And professionals, from dermatologists to pilots to dentists or plumbers are more difficult to find each time we need one.
We have challenges that require our full attention and by any standard are difficult to solve, and, in response far too many of our leaders refuse to even acknowledge their existence.
The solutions for any of these will not be simple. But prevention is.
We need leaders who will take responsibility and stand up for the needs of the community and its citizens – and not just them, but, like many Native people have known for millennia, the generation that will follow them, and the next and the next and the next…..
