What’s worse: ‘woke’ or ‘dozed’ attitudes?

Shhh! This week’s editorial is a secret. Consider it an executive session to which only select readers will be invited.

Most of you will be included, of course. Just skip down a few sentences until you get past the point at which reposting of stories on anti-social media cuts off.

The only people specifically not invited are those who care so little about their community that they’re satisfied to have all their information come from the brief samples of news and misconstrued rants posted on Facebook by others similarly afflicted by a patriotic equivalent of attention deficit disorder.

After reading last week what seemed to be the hundredth time a public official wrongly criticized us for “as usual” taking things out of context, I wanted to see whether I could put anti-social media itself into context.

So, I dialed up our subscriber database to see just how many elected and appointed officials actually subscribe to the newspaper that they seem to live to criticize. The number was a nice, round one: zero.

No member of the city council, no member of the city office staff, and no city department head has a subscription to this paper. True, they might pick it up off the newsstand or cheat and try to read it online without paying. Given that those approaches are either inefficient or illegal, they might be in keeping with what our city government often does.

Still, instead of reading and thinking, they tend to seize upon a handful of words and go off half-cocked — or, more accurately, half-informed. The results are vicious arguments in which real issues never are addressed.

Last week’s reporting that the city was attempting to produce multi-year plans for capital purchases is a case in point. The issue isn’t whether police cars need to be replaced after nine years or after 120,000 miles. It’s whether we actually need separate cars for each of the officers, almost none of whom work at the same time, and whether we actually need five officers.

Marion hasn’t had five full-time officers in more than 2½ years. Crime rates didn’t soar. There wasn’t a sudden outbreak of US-56 drivers cavalierly refusing to have license plate lights. Stray dogs didn’t take over our streets any more than usual.

Could Marion exist with four instead of five? Conventional wisdom is that one officer is needed for each 1,000 residents. By that measure, two would be enough. If Marion wants to feel twice as safe, it could go with four. But five? Why does it need as many officers as Hillsboro, which is half again Marion’s size and has a much younger populace, including college students? Senior citizens, which Marion is known for, aren’t exactly hardened criminals.

These questions never were discussed by the people who are supposed to be our representatives. The issues may have been considered, but not by the council. The mayor and city administrator apparently think it would be best to have five because Marion has a new chief. Giving him four instead of three others to supervise somehow would make his job easier, they apparently think, though it might seem to make it one-third harder.

Instead of discussing this, the council is left to consider whether nine years or 120,000 miles would be the sweet spot for getting new vehicles. It’s kind of like what happens when you go into a car dealer’s showroom, and a pushy salesperson keeps asking not whether you want to buy a car but whether you want to buy the red one or the blue one.

Much concern has been expressed recently — sometimes with solid justification — about “woke” attitudes. The bigger threat to our democracy is from a different challenge — those with “dozed” attitudes.

The “dozed” are people who don’t keep up with news, insist they need only a few snippets to make up their minds about anything, regard things like newspapers as archaic vestiges of a bygone era, and live in a world as artificial as sports contests they obsess over.

Not everybody starts off “dozed,” of course. But continual pressure from the already “dozed,” who make fun of people who try to keep up with the news or who advertise to support it, can create converts intent on making sure all of us become stranded in “news deserts” where bureaucrats and grafters can operate with impunity.

Note this week that 17 advertisers — including three based out of town — spent modest amounts to support coverage of Old Settlers Day class reunions, but the event sponsor itself, along with some of the biggest businesses in town, declined to advertise. I doubt there’s a written “dozed” manifesto like the ultra-right’s Project 2025 report, but you never know.

Waking up the “dozed” requires a real awakening by others — a willingness to speak up despite being put down and an insistence on openness that goes beyond merely allowing three-minute comments. Information and opinions need to be fully shared before rather than after decisions are made. Otherwise, decisions that we the people are allowed to make will become fewer and fewer.

— ERIC MEYER