Okay, this particular item pertains particularly strongly to the West, but similar arguments no doubt exist everywhere. It comes in two distinct forms, neither of which make for an effective argument.
One I've been seeing a lot of here is "I came here back in '96 and". Indeed, there's an argument like that in this past weekend's Tribune, presented in a letter to the Editor. The point the correspondent thinks they're making is that they've been here for a long time and have particular local knowledge.
The problem with that, and which is particularly demonstrated by the letter of this past weekend, is that for people with a really long association with an area, perhaps a lifelong one, a lot of these dates suggest that the person in fact has low association with an area. In the example cited, the correspondent is writing about a suggested change to the City of Casper. I've written on the same topic, and raised a couple of the same points, but didn't maintain some others. One point that the writer tried to maintain was that the correspondent had been here since 96, and was tired of all the people who moved in during the boom and would be glad to see them go.
Well, many people here can remember 86. . .or 76. . I can. I was born in 63 and might remember at least one thing from 66. Plenty of locals do, and from 56, 46 or 36. Saying that you came here in 96 emphasizes to us that you are actually part of the demographic, newcomers, whom you are complaining about. Or, if you are trying to establish your credentials for long observation, to us, you can't. You don't have it. It's a poorly presented argument.
The other way that this is presented is usually as a joyful observation by an admitted newcomer who has a nifty suggestion for how we can make this place a bit more like the place they fled for some reason. Again, that's a poor argument.
This is just a bad thing to say,if you are in the West. But you see it all the time. Somebody wants to argue for something, and in order to prove hteir love of their locality, they poitn out that htey moved from someplace else to here.
That doesn't make your argument credible, it makes you an outsider who is coming in and telling us what to do. We don't care about how you did things back home. You aren't back home. If you liked how they did it back home, you should go back there. That's how that argument will be received.
Provincial? Yes it is, but we tend to be that way here. If you are presenting an argument to provincial people, it doesn't help to suggest that you aren't form the province. The point isn't that you aren't from here. A lot of people aren't. But if you moved here as an adult, if you present this argument, you probably better have at least 30 years of residence before you begin trying to throw it around in a general audience.
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Postscript
The other way that this is presented is usually as a joyful observation by an admitted newcomer who has a nifty suggestion for how we can make this place a bit more like the place they fled for some reason. Again, that's a poor argument.
It occurs to me that there's another variant of this. This occurrence comes to mind as I just saw it in action at a public meeting.
What that is, is when a newcomer has an observation and loudly or persistently feels that they have a brilliant or important solution to a problem they've observed, without bothering to learn if there's a history to the situation. Normally those who know the history will quite frankly keep their mouths shut unless really provoked, which doesn't mean that it isn't irritating.
In this example, at a public meeting, a newly arrived (three years) person from Boston wanted to know why Wyoming doesn't have a second four year university. She was persistent in the point and nobody bothered to clue her in as to why. This might be regarded as a minor matter, but it really isn't.
The reason that we don't have a second four year school (that is a state funded school, we do have a second four year school) is that we've already fought that fight and lost it. But, in sort of a typical American fashion, the winning side accommodated the losing side and we're very happy with the result.
Back in the 1970s there was a big local push here to make Casper College the second four year university. It's a big community college, and the oldest one in the state, and we were in a boom (yep, that again). So local legislators and the community pushed hard for that, but we lost.
But after that, the University started to offer UW class at Casper College, and that developed into the University of Wyoming at Casper College, a massive program that offers quite a few Bachelors degrees. We here really lucked out. UW took heed of our complaints and addressed them in a spectacular fashion. We basically fully got what we wanted.
Except, perhaps, if you just arrived here recently and where you were from had more than one four year school.
Now, this is a western state with a small population. Some western states with small populations do have more than one university, but it's worth noting that many that do have one major one and then others that are very small. We've surpassed that.
None of which, I'm sure the Boston commenter knew. But her comments, to the veterans of this fight, suggest we give up what we got in favor of a doubtful proposition. It comes across like a kid, after demanding ice cream but getting pie, throwing it across the room. Not well received.
Or, I suppose, it'd come across like going to a Boston city counsel meeting and saying "Wow! Cool city! Why doesn't the Crown put in a courthouse here?"
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