In their classic song from the album of the same name, the Eagles stated in "Hotel California" that "we are all just prisoners here of our own device".
I think about that song lyric often when I think about our ongoing issues here in the city of Fort Smith.
Why are we in the situation we're in and how did we get here?
We're all just prisoners here of our own device.
For decades, we've just continued to kick the can down the road when it comes to water treatment and sewer issues here in the Fort. The EPA has been up our collective asses for about twice as long as most of you guys out there have been alive.
The issue isn't when the problem started as much as when are they going to end?
Water leaks? The city Admitted in response to an FOIA request there are over 700 leaks in Fort Smith. Some of them are over four years old. And the well-thought out solution seems to be to locate, debate, evaluate, mandate, e, obfuscate, deliberate, and illustrate. While they masturbate.
How about someone be sent out with a wrench and some pipe and fix the damn things?
The biggest problem facing our community is one of those words that end in the letter "y".
It's not "stupidity", although there is an army of local residents that would argue that point. You could lobby for a lack of "integrity" and or "responsibility", and you might be a little bit more on target.
But the word that ends in "y" that is our biggest problem here in Fort Smith is "apathy".
Apathy has taken down kingdoms and countries.
Ancient Rome toppled because those at the top took advantage of those they deemed to be beneath them for just a smidge too long. . But one day a bunch of guys got pissed off and stabbed Julius Caesar.
Civilizations, like badly maintained roads and streets, eventually crumble.
..
That Hitler guy got his stranglehold on Germany because the citizens of that country were apathetic after World War I. People got disillusioned with whatever sauerkraut version of democracy was going on over there at the time and allowed a swarmy little punk with a mustache to rise up and take power.
Venezuela, which used to be one of the strongest economies in the world, is now a festering, septic tank of corruption and poverty, and apathy allowed it to happen.
And don't even get me started on this 12-year-old mess in Syria.
Domestically, we can point to places like Detroit, Flint, Michigan, many of the once beautiful cities in California that have since become slums, and various other regions throughout the country that have taken a tumble, essentially because the people just stopped caring.
Before we get into the meat of this problem, let's talk about some of the potatoes.
A perfect example of the apathy I'm talking about can be illustrated by this joke of the city administrator/board of director's government that runs his place.
In the upcoming election, four of the seven board of directors slots for the city of Fort Smith were up for grabs.
Three of the candidates didn't even draw an opponent, and the only reason a slot came open for the fourth seat is because the man who had filled it the last few years decided to step away. And I bet you $1000 against a do-nut I can tell you today who will win that race.
I've said it time and time again, and I'll say it again here. The board of directors for the city of Fort Smith is nothing more than a smoke and mirror show designed to rubber stamp the decisions made by the City Administrator. The puppet masters pulling the strings behind the scene, who are actually the ones that control what happens in this city, know they only have to maintain a 4-3 advantage on the Board of Directors to perpetrate the facade of democracy we have been led to believe we are allowed to enjoy around here.
In the past 30 years I've only seen a handful of candidates who even tried to make a run at a Board of Directors seat who were not hand-picked by those that actually run this place. A few who have dared to buck the system were either run out of the race by rumors in it or innuendos, or they didn't have the war chest they needed to get the job done.
You are always going to have the situation where there are "haves" and there are "have-nots". The "haves" spend 90% of their time trying to figure out how to get more, while the "have-nots' are generally relegated to fighting for the scraps not controlled by the plutocrats.
The problem is, the systemhas beaten the majority of us down so much over the past that we have, honestly, become prisoners of our own device.
I see this a lot in other aspects of government, not just in Fprt Smith, but everywhere. People have become so pigeonholed that if something that happens doesn't directly affect them at that moment, and make their quality of life divert like water running from a leak on the city side of the meter, they just don't give a damn.
It's all about control. Who has control, who can make money based on that control, and how do we keep anybody else getting any of that control.
So yeah. Let's let them "have" a Board of Directors. We'll do everything in our power to maintain that 4-3 majority (and it's usually more like 5-2 or 6-1) so we can keep riding herd on the citizens of Fort Smith, keep propelling our agenda, and keep padding our pockets off the backs of decent, hard-working people, who we have convinced there is absolutely nothing they can do about it."
It's all fun and games untuil someone (metaphorically) finally decides to pull a dagger from their cloak.
There's plenty of room at the Hotel California.
You can check out anytime, but you can never leave.
