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WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS

The Geneva Shore Report is a local newspaper and almost all of its reporting, outside of the opinion/editorial and fiction section, deals with what is happening and might happen around Geneva Lake. National situations and politics seldom play a role in that reporting, but things are rapidly changing as national news begins to opt out of reporting at all and as those national decisions currently being made are likely to have deep and lasting effects on the locality of and around Lake Geneva itself.

A.E. Houseman, a famous poet, wrote many years ago a refrain in one of his poems: “Here on the level sand, between the sea and land, what shall I build or write against the fall of night?” The last election has played out onto the ‘level’ sand and between the sand and the sea will this coming form of leadership protect the lake communities and its workers, residents, visitors, and citizens against the fall of night, the meaning of which is so much deeper than the light waning and going out from day into night? This newspaper is ‘forced’ to write about those things that may affect everyone locally and also to posit and present those things that might be done to ensure survival at the ‘we hold these truths’ presentation as written in the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence. Will that revolutionary document come to mean, as time goes by, much more a prescription for resolution compared to the didactic and robotic public obedience to the rules as laid down in the U.S. Constitution? Will “We the people” be trumped by “We hold these truths?” That question, and how it plays out as time passes, is going to be contentiously dealt with and quite possibly violently dealt with.  The Declaration is a call to arms while the Constitution is just the opposite.

Will the new leadership really open camps across the nation to expel aliens, both legal and illegal? Will the leadership really ignore birthright citizens? Will this leadership go after Greenland, Panama, Mexico, and Canada? Will the Department of Education be abolished, ending Title I, II, III, and IV funding to all elementary school budgets? Will Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid be cut or abolished? All of these things have been openly brought on top of the table that no American, not even the most rapid or silly, would have ever considered thing that might be discussed, much less actually considered and acted upon.

These questions, all presented to the public by a very damaged national media complex, have been bandied about as if discussing matter-of-fact budgetary considerations, tax rules, and the appointment of judges.  Mixing in this nightmare set of potential actions, that if taken will require the enlistment of many of America’s young to go into wars, deny older people incomes and medical care they have become accustomed to having because they already paid for them, and the education and childcare endemic to the country’s elementary school systems across the land. These are local newspaper concerns because they have the potential to affect every person living around Geneva Lake is extremely serious ways regardless of political party affiliation or beliefs.

The Geneva Shore Report was created, issued, and survives to point out things to the public that are happening or likely to happen. Those reports and warnings are intended to give the public a chance to be a part of the decision-making process about what might be built and what it might look like, what it costs, what is entailed, and more. This work of the GSR has been most effective in alerting the public to everything Hillmoor, the land that Mirabel Hummel bought, on the parking structure to be built downtown, by the attempted takeover of the Maytag Lagoon by developers, the mess of Symphony Bay that is still ongoing and so much more.  The GSR does not and has not made decisions on those things.  The leadership of the city has made those decisions, but they’ve done so in the light of day with everything on top of the country and with a public aroused enough to attend meetings and be heard. These coming potential decisions and their potential implementation have a huge impact on the local population and the paper’s attempts to forewarn the public are being written about right now, in this article and with more to come. The population surrounding the wonder of Geneva Lake may go to this ‘fall of night,’ but it will not do so without being able to read and hear about it first. The Geneva Shore Report was organized and will very much remain against the “Fall of Night.”

Supporters of the coming leadership, in the face of these proposed horrors and even the horror of giving more money to the billionaires than they already have, all speak with the same diction and tone: “He does not really mean it. It’s a negotiation tool. He won’t do it or them.” There’s comfort in believing such things but the Geneva Shore Report is not about comfort. It’s about finding out and then reporting as close to the truth as possible, particularly when the kind of comfort that may be offered is cold comfort indeed.