Lost your “steelies”? So has Trog Sham.

Loyal readers will recall the dark and ominous scene yesterday at the Luddite Bar & Grill, where a half-dozen “mad as hell” undersized underachievers were in the process of being whipped into a foam-flecked frenzy at the campaign appearance of the caped Trog Shaman (for convenience, henceforth to be known as Trog Sham) and her personal Sancho Panza, otherwise known as the Anti-Grammar, or Congeal Taxpayer (CT), the androgynous scribe and wielder of the magic crayon.

“Yes, indeed,” demand(ed) the Trog Shaman, “Show me any sane person out there who truly believes this administration is not a train wreck, and I'll show you a person with a vested interest.”

Thoroughly amused, NA Confidential intervened to ask if Trog Sham might answer a question:

I, Roger A. Baylor, truly believe that this administration is not a train wreck -- so, tell me, Laura, what’s my “vested” interest?

Later in the day, several others joined us in asking the same question. Now, we have an answer:

Vested interests? That's easy.
Destinations Booksellers, Sponsor: James the Cleaner (bankrupt).
Roger Dodger/Rich O's, Expansion:
Prime Downtown Location.
Tim: wannabee anything.
bluegill, Will you be running for City Council?
Greg, Roger's already working the crowd for your run at office.
There's a price on Steve Price's head. He KNOWS there's no money.
ekin, T.Toran takes real good care of you guys doesn't he?
We were promised, during campaign, we wouldn't be paying for an 'Assistant Mayor' (stop spliting hairs), and everyone knows this. How much in city salaries & perks does the 'Director of City Operations' cost us per year?

Etc., etc.

In essence, Trog Sham’s ongoing primal scream constitutes a genuine platform for the future of New Albany – a platform far more worthy of Pol Pot than progress, but so be it.

Now, for perhaps the very first time, we can see how very sad it is to grapple unsuccessfully with the demons of fear, envy and spite that motivate the worldview of those who’ve resigned themselves to a position in life that, in fact, is by no means fixed – this is America, land of social mobility -- and who wish to consign the city itself to the same lonely fate.

But there’s good news.

Just this week, a visiting expert on urban renewal and economic redevelopment met with Paul Wheatley and is impressed with the possibilities in New Albany.

Scribner Place took another incremental step forward.

A young couple from out of state was spotted shopping for a building on Market Street.

Every day, these and other little things – not little people – are combining to create momentum forward, into the future.

NA Confidential’s “vested interests”?

Progress, not regress. Reason, not superstition. Economic development, not squalor. Civility, not violence. Human rights, not institutional wrongs. Trust in the capable, not their emasculation at the hands of the incapable.

As Trog Sham unintentionally illustrates, the choice of who is best suited to advance progress is dazzlingly clear.