The Blue Bag Rag's pre-eminent editorialist is back with a tale of how he came to favor severing ties with DeKalb and adding more government, this city, to our lives. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, a trite expression but more relevant than he may think. Given that a camel is often described as a horse designed by committee, it is an appropriate analogy for government, especially the two most overbearing in our lives: the county; and the city.
One key ingredient at that time was the strong divisiveness between the population in the Dunwoody area (yet to be fully defined) and the county government and this was leveraged by the pro-city forces to foster great emotional support for their goals. The angry folks were of the unthinking sort, who when confronted with an issue respond with "Something must be done. This is something. Let's do this." Committees were formed and another camel was designed. Hastily, lest another something crop up catching the attention of the unthinking, or the unthinking start thinking. If that force were great in you, then you saw success manifested in a new camel, one with the tongue of a snake, a greedy appetite, and enormous capacity for defecation. But, it is your camel, and that's all that matters.
Much has changed. The original antagonist, Vernon Jones, is gone. In the meantime DeKalb had a CEO, who during a pandemic, revealed a stark contrast between the his camel and Dunwoody's. The comparison does not favor Dunwoody, and it has become clear that the editorialist's real issue was not with DeKalb's camel, but with a particular politician's personality. This cannot happen in Dunwoody because this camel ain't designed like that. But neither will we get the likes of a Michael Thurmond.
History loops, and while it may not repeat itself, the verses rhyme. Now it appears that Dunwoody's camel jockeys may well have loaded that last, crippling straw on their camel's back. We seem to be in another period where the electorate is at odds with those camel jockeys at city hall, just as pro-city forces were at odds with DeKalb's back in the day. Things are not likely to dissipate in a couple of news cycles---this disconnect has legs. We even have a re-run of the "Jill and Vernon, sitting in a tree..." with a top city pol and a vendor exec having a remote rendezvous described by one critic as secret while defended by the pol as private. In this context the "privacy for me, but not for thee" storyline will not play well, and is reminiscent of the kind of haughty politics that fueled the flight from DeKalb.
If the electorate remains angry then are we about to get a new camel? We can hope.
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