That passive-aggressive bit bores me.
Jameson, if I didn’t want to see anything here in New Albany improve, I wouldn’t have spent hundred of hours writing this blog and my columns. I wouldn’t have taken my own time to sell improvement and progress to people who habitually view New Albany as nowhere land.
From city council to neighborhood association, from forums to Develop New Albany and the Urban Enterprise Association, I wouldn’t have joined, volunteered, attended meetings, taken notes and participated. I wouldn’t have taken every chip my company has on the table and bet them on downtown revitalization.
I wouldn’t have stood here, fully known and unmoving, and absorbed the (mostly) anonymous abuse hurled at me for the past six years by the looters, the embittered and the clueless, these being the sorts who stand in the path of improvement. They love trying to make it all about me because it satisfies an itch that they’re compelled to scratch, but I know that in a tactical sense, wisdom comes from my knowing that it isn’t about me — not at all, because while they’re busy pounding me, others are free to go about accomplishing things.
Being a decoy is fun. You should try it some time.
How do I know that these tactics are succeeding? If I point my camera in the air during a council meeting and take a flash photo of the ceiling, Dan Coffey will whirl in his seat, glare, and form silent curse words with his lips. If I were to state that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, Steve Price would disagree and claim that we simply can’t afford to know the truth.
Am I guilty of rattling their self-confining cages? Yes, I am. Do I throw their venom back at them? Damned straight I do. Does it make me lose my temper on occasion? Of course it does. When the Erika Denharts of the community suggest that the city’s economic future be irreparably gutted for the sole reason that they’re unwilling to pay what it costs to flush, it’s hard not to lose your temper. They’re treating their own city the way that Rome treated Carthage. Tear it down, spread the salt around, and go on a Wal-Mart shopping round.
Jameson, I suspect that just like me, you want to live in a place that is bright, not dull. One that succeeds, not fails. One that lives and works smart, not stupid. One that obeys laws, not urinates on them. One that is functional, not comic opera tragic. One inhabited by people who occasionally think of the greatest good and not their own self-aggrandizement.
So, what’s the disconnect? Is the biggest difference between us our respective interpretations of a Greek philosopher who has been dead for more than 2,000 years? Is it shallower? Deeper than that? It isn’t about me, and it isn’t about you. Right? So, tell me: What’s it all about?
Readers, feel free to weigh in. Remember/RemeberCharlemagne’s comment in response to yesterday’s posting is reprinted below.
—
Everyone has his or her own style of writing.
When have you ever seen me lose my temper? Ask yourself the same question.
When have I made fun of you or anyone of your friends other than the comment in this thread? Ask yourself that question.
I found this blog by reading your columns and what appeared as an invitation for readers to exchange ideas on local topics. What I discovered is people like you who are very hypocritical. There comes a point when even I tire of trying to work past others who live by double standards.
You have talked about me doing things were other people have tried and failed. I saw it early but wanted to give you and others the benefit and what I saw is the failure has a lot to do with this group here.
It is as simple as this I don’t think you want to see anything improve because then you won’t have anything to complain about and you will be left with reflecting about yourself. For me, as long as I live in New Albany I will truthfully want to see it improve. I’m well rounded and I don’t fear change. You are the “unjust” you only do what is necessary to give the perception that you are just.
“Injustice is strife which arises among the three principles-a meddlesomeness, and interference, and rising up of a part of the soul against the whole, an assertion of unlawful authority, which is made by a rebellious subject against a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal-what is all this confusion and delusion but injustice and intemperance and cowardice and ignorance, and every form of vice?”
If you like Socrates it is only because he gave you a model of an unjust person that you are. Gadfly? To call you that would be an honor. Disappointment is more like it.
Goodnight Thrasymachus
