IN THE face of dangers much greater than any we have recently faced, US President Franklin Roosevelt, said: "We have nothing to fear except fear itself."
Enough. Isn't it time the council got down to business and dealt with real and potentially soluble issues that face our city, rather than to persist in this fear-mongering campaign against one unwelcome citizen. The fact is we're stuck with Mr Wilson. That is the decision of the court, and we're still a nation that abides by the law.
It was worth the effort and money to challenge the decision of the Department of Corrections, if only to protest at its inept handling of the matter. But that's over and done.
This posturing on the part of several councillors is doing little to remedy the situation and much to worsen it.
They're enhancing Wilson's status beyond belief and beyond our borders to the city's detriment in the nation's eyes.
I'm surprised at Jack Bullock's lending himself to this campaign of fear-mongering, as he's impressed me in the past as being more sensible, and more positive.
And I'm sorry to see Ray Stevens involved, as he can be quite level-headed, especially out of the orbit of the former mayor.
The former mayor promised to surprise me further when he exhibited good sense at the maternity hearings. Well, no surprises there.
This business of handing out trespass orders and all the rest of a public shunning is increasingly counter-productive and totally unnecessary, and, as a council action, it may be illegal. I commend those councillors, and especially Mayor Annette Main, for their common sense in opposing such mediaeval methods. Wilson's parole conditions already contain restrictions as to his visiting parks and so forth. Let's leave that to Corrections.
As to Wilson himself, his behaviour, his crimes were monstrous. But he's served his time. Now we're making him into a monster of our own imaginings. With all this attention, we've endowed him with powers he could only have imagined in his deepest fantasies.
Consider that sex crimes are only incidentally about sex. They are about power. They're not about seduction but about subjugation. That's what the science tells us and it's what I can confirm from the many interviews I've had with rapists. What we are doing with this campaign is feeding this predator's fantasies of his power. In that sense, by our own actions we are ramping up the fear within our community and allowing this one malevolent person to hold the entire city hostage.
Consider also this reality. While I hold no false idea that Wilson is harmless - far from it - his actual crimes occurred over 20 years ago when he was in his forties and younger. He's now 65. Not that there aren't a lot of fit people at 65, but they're not as capable as people in their forties.
Moreover, 18 years of prison does a lot to a person's cognitive capacity and it's rare for it to have been an improvement.
The constant fear of assault from other inmates among whom sex offenders are considered a legitimate target, has got to take a toll on a person's endocrine system and on their body as a whole. It would not surprise me to learn that Wilson has one or other stress-related illness. He may be a monster but he's not the same monster he was 18 years ago.
We can free ourselves from the grip of fear by stopping the fear-based campaign.
We need to institute a safety plan such as the one Dave Feickert presented to council, which was agreed upon. It contained reasonable means for providing a positive approach, based on community-wide participation and playing to our strengths and not our fears.
It included a requirement for assessment of Mr Wilson and therefore of the actual risk he presents. The antidote to fear is fact.
After that, council members need, collectively, to pull up their socks and get to work on our real problems.