Editorial: Glasses are half-full, too

Nov 1, 2023

ERIC MEYER
Publisher | Marion County Record

Somehow, in the wake of all the bad things that happened when our office was raided Aug. 11, a few good ones have emerged, as well.

We saw positives in last week’s city election forum, where every candidate spoke up in favor of less secrecy, more openness, less hostility and more civility in city government.

We see positives of a minor sort nearly every day here at the newspaper, where we have become somewhat of a tourist attraction. In between the world’s deepest hand-dug gas well and the world’s largest ball of twine is this small-town newspaper that police raided, in violation of huge chunks of our Constitution.

Most days, it’s a traveler detouring from a trip between towns like Kansas City and Denver to visit Marion. Sometimes, it’s people who jump in their cars in Texas or elsewhere and end up having no place better to go than here. Tuesday, it was a busload of senior citizens from Lawrence who stopped by our office as part of a day trip.

As I’ve been doing in various newspaper, TV, and radio interviews, I included a comment about how the saddest part of the affair is the black eye Marion received because of it. Harkening to my years in Illinois, I suggested that maybe we should be celebrated, as Illinois sometimes tries to be, not for having corruption but for having the fortitude to expose it.

Our guests said didn’t come to Marion to see where incompetent hicks live. They came to see a place where a community of people were courageous enough to expose bullying and refused to let it go undiscovered, the way it often does in other communities.

We’re not just stronger together. We’re stronger when we refuse to take the path of timidly accepting wrongs rather than valiantly trying to right them. In other words, we’re stronger together by being stronger individually. We don’t need to put that on yard signs. We simply need to live that way.

— ERIC MEYER