For the sake of argument, let's say that the Promise program will be the panacea for Davenport that its backers claim it will be. People will flood into the city because they've been promised college tuition, vocational training, or (if they're in the military) a homestead grant. Enrollment in the Davenport Community School District will reverse its nearly-two-decade-long trend of decline - thus ensuring a greater amount of state education funding, which is distributed on a per-pupil basis. And the increased aggregate property value will bring new riches to city government and the school district through property taxes, thus allowing them to lower the property-tax rate.

Even if all that is true, the backers of the Davenport Promise have structured the program all wrong.

Every businessperson and every citizen wants to win with new residents and with economic development, all for good reasons.

As a member of the initial River Vision committee, I and hundreds of people talked about the visions of both Rock island and Davenport, and the riverfront they share. I listened and put forth my ideas for the Armory. Those ideas were a few years ago and not 2009. Armory Park is a wonderful concept in its time. Unfortunately, this is not the time. With fiscal responsibility to its citizens a primal concern of all mayors and city councils, we now must be diligent and closely monitor Rock Island in a troubled economy and be able to crunch down and maintain the status quo as necessary.

April 1775: The British are fighting American colonists in Concord and Lexington, and the siege of the British in Boston commences shortly thereafter.

January 1776: Despite these military conflicts, the large majority of the colonists favored reconciliation with Britain and had no truck with wild-eyed revolutionaries.

July 1776: The Continental Congress - with the landslide support of those same colonists - adopted the Declaration, told King George to take a hike, and the war was on.

What happened in between? What created this incredible realignment of public opinion in six short months?

"Black Friday," traditionally known as such as a ledger reference for retailers making profits on pre-Christmas sales the day after Thanksgiving, has now acquired another meaning as well: "black" as in death. At a Valley Stream, New York, Wal-Mart, "a temporary Wal-Mart worker died after a throng of unruly shoppers broke down the doors and trampled him moments after the store opened early Friday, police said." (Associated Press, November 29.)

There are times when a concrete, real-world event can serve as a focus, a highlight in microcosm, of the greater cultural milieu in which it is embedded, and this tragic occurrence -- as well as some of the "explanations" being offered in the wake of it -- is a textbook example.