At first I was completely horrified like everybody else at the proposed cuts to the University System of Georgia and the University of Georgia itself. My knee jerked, and I was off on a tirade against the anti-intellecutal Republicans who control our state government. “How can they do this to us?” I ranted. “They’ll kill the university; they’ll kill Athens.” Finally, in the midst of my frothing I began to understand where they are coming from, and I felt better. In fact, once I could see their overall plan, I could fathom just how brilliant it is.

The main thing to remember is that this is not just about the University of Georgia; it’s not even just about the university system. This is about the whole State of Georgia, but it’s not just about the State of Georgia as it is now, with all its revenue shortfalls and budget balancing. This is about the State of Georgia as it is going to be. This is about the future, and once you grasp this, your eyes will open to a broad vista, revealing what Georgia will be henceforth.

Remember when we were all criticizing our Republican leaders for their failure to alleviate our traffic gridlock—especially in Atlanta—by building more roads? Remember when we lamented their failure to understand the renewed importance of railroads to our economy? Remember when we criticized them for their shortsightedness in allowing Atlanta to run out of water? Remember when we thought they were robbing our schoolchildren of a decent education? Remember when we thought them callous toward trauma care and kids’ health? Remember, even, when we protested their tantrums over gay marriage and their dedication to arming every citizen with a concealed weapon? Remember how we hooted at their promotion of the idea that Georgia should secede from the union or at least nullify all acts of the federal government as they apply to our state?

What the governor and his Republican legislature could see that we couldn’t see at that time is that very soon the traffic congestion in Atlanta will begin to die out naturally, without our spending any money on road-building. The same with the water problem and with rail. Atlanta is not going to grow anymore: it is going to shrink. Atlanta will subside back toward where it was in the mid-’50s—a slower, friendlier town that doesn’t have all the expensive needs of a growing city, like, say, Charlotte, in a state with a legislature that understands investing for growth. A shrinking city needs a lot less government and investment in infrastructure: the same goes for a state. In other words, our Republican leaders knew that their withholding support for essential services would force people out of Atlanta and out of Georgia, not to mention Athens.

Can’t you see how brilliantly forward-thinking they are? As Atlanta shrinks, so shrinks Georgia, lessening the need for more jobs, highways, water, infrastructure, etc. all over the state.

Now you can understand why these cuts to the state’s universities make perfect sense and are part of a whole—a unified plan for our state and its future.

Because there will be fewer people in Atlanta and in Georgia, there will be fewer students in the universities. That means that they’re right in downsizing the faculty. And as the faculty downsizes, and as fewer people get college educations, of course we won’t need an intellectually challenging radio station, nor will there be all that many people who think they need to go out to a state-supported “botanical garden” when they want to see a tree.

The University of Georgia will be the perfect fit for the new Georgia. We won’t need the research on esoteric subjects or the literary journal or the book publishing or any of those essentials of a nationally competitive university. To tell the truth, this will probably be as good a time as any to face the fact that things like English and art and philosophy are actually irrelevant to the requirements of Georgians, who just want a good basic education.

Thanks to the vision of our Republican leaders, Georgia will no longer need to have much to do with the rest of the country or with other countries. We’ll do very well here in our own local universe, where less is more, and this is the best of all possible worlds.

Pete McCommons

editor@flagpole.com