It’s lights, camera, inaction on conspiracy theories

Have you heard? Movie moguls have given up on Hollywood and decided to move from the land of fruits and nuts to a more all-American location — which, of course, makes Marion County a prime candidate for landing one or more major motion picture studios.

Location scouts already have suggested Aulne might be a highly coveted site, but the choice would not be without problems.

Studios are huge. They’ll claim lots of farmland. And with all their lights and special effects, they need a lot of electricity. And that makes them hard to cool, even in winter. They’ll need water to film beach scenes and naval battles. And they’re noisy with car crashes and fight scenes.

Come to think of it, they may not be the neighbors we want. So, we’d better declare a three-year moratorium on studios moving to Marion County and spend those years haggling over precisely what conditions we’d put on them.

Truth is, Hollywood is no more interested in Aulne than Aulne is in Hollywood. There would be no reason to relocate here, where weather for filming is unpredictable and we’re half a continent away from technical support studios need.

Although we’ve recently become alarmed that they might be located here, it’s pretty much the same with data centers.

As was pointed out by one of those in attendance at a Patriots for Liberty meeting Sunday, data centers go where there’s lots of Internet bandwidth. That’s something Marion County — and Kansas in general — doesn’t have, except in the Kansas City area. Wichita is planning to get it, but it’s not there yet.

Our climate also tends to be warm. Northern states would require less cooling. And our electricity rates aren’t exactly at bargain-basement prices the way they are in some areas.

We’re not getting a data center any more than we’ll be getting a movie studio. So why spend so much time and effort worrying about them?

All we really need to do is put a line in the county’s comprehensive plan saying that any development that would create unusual demands on utilities or natural resources or eliminate large areas devoted to agriculture will receive extra scrutiny from the county’s planning and zoning commission.

That’s enough justification to challenge data centers, movie studios, nuclear waste repositories, or anything else that’s highly unlikely to come up, even if it suddenly and against all logic does.

So why do otherwise? Mainly, to score cheap political points and calm panic created by conspiracy theories that dominate anti-social media. Rabble-rousers are constantly raising all manner of issues about largely irrelevant potential challenges, just as how another spectator at Sunday’s Patriots meeting seemed to question whether all the data buzzing around might somehow scramble our brains.

There are real challenges to the safety and security of our tranquil county, and most of them we never even think about. Consider what might happen if dozens of anhydrous ammonia tanks started to leak, or if grain dust in an elevator exploded, or perhaps worst of all if one of the many trains containing all manner of often hazardous material were to derail. Consider, too, what might happen if a dam or dike were not maintained properly and broke.

Somehow, we accept these threats, just as we accept the threat that a giant meteor will collide with the planet and destroy all life. Statistically, that’s actually one of the most likely ways for all of us to die — not so much because it’s going to happen but because, if it does, there’s really no hope for anyone anywhere.

It’s not in our best interests to live scared of any of these things, and it’s almost sinful to focus on such issues at a time in which more attention should be paid to increasing government efficiency and reducing unnecessary spending so businesses might locate here and residents on fixed income can continue to afford to live here.

We worry so much about data centers coming here, about police needing to be equipped to deal with widespread riots, and about so many other unlikely events that we might as well create a movie studio moratorium and a whole new department to defend us against giant meteors hitting the county.

It’s what magicians refer to as misdirection. Look at this so you don’t look at what you really need to look at. It’s beneath the dignity and responsibility of our elected and appointed officials to pander to such concerns.

— ERIC MEYER