"Time To Get Serious" is the title of an excellent article in North Coast Journal about the City Council of Arcata, California, a town long-given to symbolic posturing on affairs of state, and the coddling of anti-social vagrants. I've highlighted news reports of Arcata's dysfunction frequently; here's one post with links to several others.

Now, some Arcatans, including candidates for an open council seat, are saying, "enough already." The Journal reports:

...there is...something of a backlash brewing in the town -- something candidate Mark Wheetley calls "compassion fatigue." Business owners and residents concerned about crime and inhospitablily on the Plaza were once too cowed to voice their concerns at council meetings. Many are still shy, but others are no longer afraid of being booed down by the crowd.

Other local residents are fed up with the many "symbolic resolutions" the city finds time to pass -- most of them aimed at the policies of the Bush administration. Some decry them as ineffective and time-wasting, as Mayor Michael Machi suggested at the last council meeting, while others say that they are downright harmful to the community's image.

The size of the backlash is impossible to measure, but judging by the current crop of council candidates, one thing is clear: Would-be council members are taking it seriously in a way that they haven't before. With the exception of candidate Greg Allen -- a dyed-in-the-wool civil libertarian -- all of the current candidates advocate some form of what candidate Michael Winkler calls "tough love" with the city's indigent population. And most of them think that there needs to be some reform in the way the city goes about taking a stand on international issues.

.....On the symbolic resolutions, there is widespread agreement that the city has to slow down and consider more carefully what it is doing. Wheetley argues that the power to call out the national government should be used more judiciously, and that council members should take into account whether their action is likely to have any effect. Winkler says that he would want to be sure that a "wide majority" of the town supports a resolution before he votes for it. He says he would specifically reach out to the town's conservatives to solicit their views.

Scoggin says that although the council has a long, admirable tradition of voicing the concerns of its residents to those in higher office, the process can be a distraction from the city's other business.

Over the next decade, I predict a growing weariness among residents of liberal bastions small and large with the identity politics and symbolic politics held dear by so many local, state and federal elected officials in Blue America. Isolationism on foreign policy; racial preferences; "institutional racism;" the salving embrace of the "diversity" mantra; gay marriage; the continued flogging of abortion rights; dissing NCLB; and fighting foie gras - these are the issues of a bankrupt political minority destined for the far margins of political discourse.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 28, 2005 05:52 PM

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