“It’s a small world after all.” Climate Change is showing how small our world is – and how little regard we have for it. When you’re accelerating into a stone wall — letting up on the gas isn’t much of a solution. COVID was just the splatter: Wait till we get dumped in the fryer.
“Equity: Where does it leave those who are left out?”
There is no rural social justice – there is no such thing as Rural Social Justice in any government policy making.
Rural communities are excluded from our national consciousness: a vacant space in everything from “Cost of Living” calculations to cultural identity.
They are subordinated to political agendas, corporate profits, and agricultural pollution — bullied and deprived unseen in the shadow of a Black urban overclass.
“The real tragedy of these small enclaves of marginality and poverty is that people are playing a game of life that has been structured in such a way that they are required to play but prevented from winning” wrote Janet Fitchen in her groundbreaking “Poverty in Rural America” – four decades later: nothing has been built on that ground — and the poverty, neglect and drugs have long since taken it back over.
It’s your actions that define you – it’s the “acts of kindness” – not the talk of kindness excusing acts of cruelty. The modern insistence that an excuse can re-define the act: leaves us all the victims of those who oppress, lie, or discriminate for their own profit.
If you call “negative”: “affirmative” – is an act any less repudiating?
When people ask you; “How are you doing?” – just say “Good” or “I’m doing OK” – because most people don’t want to hear your problems — the same thing is true of surveys.
Our Town survey, like everything to do with policy and politics, comes from Cornell. The cold-call telephone questions were loaded, open for interpretation, and asked well in advance of public awareness of the issues they would be used for. When the agenda of the survey emerged – its authors quickly backpedaled in an angry Town meeting: claiming it was only a preliminary indication; and of no great importance — this same survey was later used as the sole determining mandate from the residents for the Town’s Comprehensive Plan and all future development.
Surveys are used to provide an appearance of public legitimacy to the unilateral decision making of Cornell County planners. When residents claim that they are inadequate, biased, or deceptive – county officials merely defend the results; and make no changes,
People may not make the right decisions — and surveys are an important step to prevent that.
Equity is portrayed as “some people needing a bigger ladder to pick apples from the tree” – but what happens when there is only one apple? Should they be given a cherry-picker?
Equitable policies are always presented within the framework of a Peaceable Kingdom: where there is enough for all – but from a Government that covets all power — this paradigm of sharing is only a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“The trick is to make even the stupidest dog jump through the hoop.” Our government uses every kind of psychological and emotional artifice of repetition and indoctrination to make us perform – and jump through the mists of uncertainty to a future worldly paradise. And if you’re unable or unwilling to do that — they’ll give you a little shove.
The overclass is not the top – the overclass is only the top of what you can aspire to — the top is already taken. The scrambling for perks and power by those below keeps those on top where they are — and us where we are. Be the overclass – be the tool – be the fool.
Even if you have the ethical “flexibility” to twist the principle of Equality into “unequally” – you still have to get around the continued existence of groups who are systematically denied this help.
In Tompkins County: there are so many mass transit busses in the Cornell campus that it’s hard to drive a car around – and there are bus stops every few hundred feet in urban and suburban areas – but there are no buses serving rural county residents.
Rural people are given the ‘separate-but-equal’ policy of requesting volunteer drivers [if available] in advance [and paying more] – for every trip.
Rural areas have no sheriff’s patrols – you call in incidents; and they’ll come out and write a report. I’ve twice has medevac helicopters land in my front yard to airlift road accident victims – and we’re still unable to get law enforcement or speed limits on our lawless road.
These are just two of the “equitable” policy solutions of Ivy League Progressives to the needs of the county’s poorest, most underserved and disadvantaged [and unrepresented] population.
Progressives that can toss off these inequitable policies with a “difficult” or “no money” in a single sentence.
They pretend that our rural communities, and our problems don’t exist – and create “equitable” policies to speed up the process. Equitabullshit!
Who decides what’s equitable? And how? And why? — Or more precisely: Who decides on who decides? And how? And why?
Back when Science valued wisdom over technology – they used the analogy of a gorilla congress deciding to make the perfect gorilla: the congress would always decide on having greater specialization; to better do what gorillas had always done — they would never envision an unspecialized human being.
The wisdom and compassion needed for “equitable” decision making is the same as would be needed for an enlightened and beneficent dictatorship.
History has shown us the foolishness of installing such a “benign” rulership — and that even in the small chance of it happening: it was certain to be followed by a succession of tyrants.
You could say the NYSDOT response to our Town’s request for a speed reduction on Lansingville Road is the same as every other response we’ve received to our pleas for rural health, welfare, and inclusion: No.
Why would the NYSDOT refuse to reduce the speed limit on Lansingville Road? The answer, I suspect, is the same as why the County Highway Director claims – in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary – that all the truck traffic on Lansingville Road is agricultural.
The Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council concluded: “the petition signed by residents and the letter of support of a speed reduction signed by the sheriff, and add our Traffic Count Report, which shows a marked increase in traffic along Lansingville Road in the past two years, as well as our Vehicle Crash Data Report, which includes the road segment of Lansingville Road from Rt.34B to Jerry Smith Road on its list of top 10 highest crash severity road segments between 2015 – 2019. These documents together seem to make a clear and simple case for the request.”
The NYSDOT refusal was “Based on the existing roadside development, crash analysis, and test drives.”
A bland and uninformative stone wall — the same stone wall that surrounds every rural community in New York State.