CARLTON FLETCHER: Middle America needs to speak up

“Lunatic fringer, I know you’re out there.”

— Red Rocker

I ran into Cecil Fowler at the farewell to Albany High School shindig Saturday, which was, by the way, an excellent send-off … kudos to Lisa Hood, Stephen Brimberry, Bruce Dorminy, Gary Sloan and Mike Cumbie. Cecil is one of those salt-of-the-earth folks who’s never been one, as long as I’ve known him, to make brash statements.

He’s just a really good guy.

But it seems the current national and local political climate has even a soft-spoken gentleman like Fowler perplexed.

“You know what I wish you’d do?” Cecil said as we exchanged greetings. “I wish you’d let all these people who have created this mess we’re in these days know that they are helping to destroy our country.

“People aren’t civil anymore. They can’t have a simple conversation without bringing their partisan politics into it. And they won’t even listen to someone whose views are different. It didn’t used to be that way. We used to could talk through our differences, get along even if we didn’t agree.”

We had only a moment to chat. Cecil was part of the large group from the 1,000-plus who attended Saturday’s event who dropped by Hugh Mills Stadium for what turned out to be a cool group photo. I had, in the words of Bob Seger, “deadlines and commitments,” so I had to fight my way through the crowd to get back to work.

But before we parted, Cecil said something that stuck with me.

“We don’t have to turn everything into a fight,” he said. “As long as we keep going the way we’re going — and putting these people in office who are the main reason we’re acting this way — we’re never going to turn ourselves around.”

I was thinking about Cecil Fowler’s words, as fate would have it, Monday morning when frequent Herald contributor — and all-around good guy — Warren Grant came by the office a few minutes before the start of the Dougherty County Commission meeting. Warren (I always think of rapper Warren G when I see him … a quirk) wanted to talk about the Herald article in which City Commissioner B.J. Fletcher reacted to a recent USA Today story that ranked Albany as the seventh-worst city in America based on employment numbers, crime and housing.

Warren, who’s retired now, grew up a working man, and he has a blue-collar perspective that’s common around here. The big difference, though, is he’s not one of those followers who latches onto someone else’s idea and refuses to consider an alternate viewpoint. He’s a thinking man, not a sheep.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do here, but we’ve got to do something,” Grant said. “Our government leaders have got to stop focusing so much on things that don’t really matter — things that go over well only with their friends who hold similar viewpoints — and start addressing the problems like the one in the article.

“I don’t know the answer. But I know that what we’ve got going on now is not working.”

Two guys, two similar concerns. And I would bet what little I have that if you talk to others like them in this community, regular folks who are sick and tired of what passes for leadership on the local, state and national levels, you’d hear similar concerns.

The lunatic fringe on the far right and far left are not America. They’re greedy, self-centered pigs, who, piglike, want everything to meet their specific needs. The real America is the massive group in the middle who have rooms in their lives for peaceful coexistence. More of them need to speak up, to drown out the rants of the freaking extremists.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.