Independent Guestatorial: Now what?

With the election of Donald Trump as president, the United States officially entered the Age of Simulation.

In keeping with its historical role as “a different kind of town,” this could be a clue that when the rest of the country turns phony, it’s time for Eureka Springs to get real.

In the nation at large, as in the Arkansas counties surrounding Eureka, real leaders and real government vanished over night. Unlike the popular notion that big changes occur slowly over time, real change usually comes in the blink of an eye. One night you go to sleep in the Soviet Union and the next day you wake up in Russia. One night you go to bed confident that Hillary will be in the White House and the Republican Party has finally committed suicide but when you wake up, Trump is president and the Democratic party has disintegrated. Then what?

Maybe you’re like Ron Dirge on Facebook. “The republicans deserve what they’re going to get, but I don’t.” By extension, it might be argued that Eureka doesn’t deserve to be treated like the rest of Arkansas because it’s not like the rest of Arkansas. It’s not even like the rest of Carroll County. How we’re going to make out is going to be largely a matter of how we treat ourselves.

In a recent column, Bill Moyers quotes New York Times columnist David Brooks. Turning his back on conventional political analysis, Brooks adopts a more spiritual perspective, stressing “values of mutual respect, a bolder sense of civic engagement, an emphasis on community and neighborhood, and overall a belief in trickle-up decency rather than trickle-down economics.”

Moyers continues, “For those of us now languishing in despair, this may be a prescription for rejuvenation. We have lost the country, but by refocusing, we may have gained our own little patch of the world.” It is time to consider “the effect that policy, strategy and governance have not only on our physical and economic well-being but also on our spiritual well-being.” In other words, we need to have a long-overdue conversation about our values because they determine what kind of town we are and, in many ways, what kind of lives we live.

For the past half century, Eureka has been run under a value system which allows a de facto Business Party to manipulate it for personal profit while excluding the needs and aspirations of many of the city’s oldest and youngest residents. So has the United States and you see how that has worked out.

I’m not sure it ever was, but Eureka is not now “a tourist town.” That’s the big lie. It’s a town. A hometown, with kids and families, dreams and nightmares. Every year, people move here who don’t want to have anything to do with tourism. That’s why we have four banks in a city of fewer than 2,000 people. Some Eurekans are retired, some are financially comfortable, some commute to work in the vibrant “corridor” of Northwest Arkansas, some are on fixed income and some are just poor in ways that hillbillies have known for generations.

Where are their after-school programs? Where is the simple community center where senior citizens can gather and visit? Where are the repairs to the city’s physical infrastructure which have been delayed in favor of money spent to attract more tourists? Where are the alternative businesses that would allow the city’s children to earn a living without being forced to move away or stay and support a family while flipping burgers or slinging drinks?

“Values of mutual respect, a bolder sense of civic engagement, an emphasis on community and neighborhood, and overall a belief in trickle-up decency rather than trickle-down economics.” Worth considering.

Vernon Tucker