This is the second of two posts on the Whitewater Tree Commission. The first appears immediately below.
Terms of Law. One finds a quick willingness for some speakers and bureaucrats to rail about harassment, or maligning city workers, by some on — or off — the TC. Whether all of the circumstances involved justify those terms, I cannot say. Quite frankly, I’m not sure anyone else is sure, either.
If violations of law have been committed, then charge; if not, stop using the terms as though they have been committed. (It’s foolish to pretend, too, that everyone here would he held to the same standard, in any event. No one, at least no one serious, thinks Whitewater works that way.)
Personal and Political. Often — very often — Whitewater’s elite cannot tell the difference between the personal and the political. Someone criticizes policy, and in Whitewater, that’s a personal attack, justifying an overheated personal response or an overheated policy response, and probably both. Many of the policy concerns about the TC were already in the past by the time of the meetings; personal animus continued on, very much alive. It’s just a joke — a bad, feeble one — to pretend otherwise. Personalities clashed, these clashes were not addressed properly, and policy (abolish it!) became the instrument of an overwrought reaction.
Now, I’ve been a critic of a few Whitewater politicians and bureaucrats. No reason for surprise — it’s true. Yet, you’d think that I’d desecrated a sanctuary for all the difference it makes.
Dissent. Look, Whitewater’s elite, wholly apart from events at Council –dislikes the kind of dissent that’s completely normal and conventional in — wait for it — the rest of America. They dislike it because policy and debate is debased by personal sensitivity in Whitewater. All across America, for centuries, our people has been known for its free and vigorous debate. Attributed, anonymous, you name it. It’s one of the many reasons were are — rightly — the envy of all the world, of all history.
Whitewater’s few hundred don’t see the world that way, and they gather to themselves bureaucrats, local and transplanted, who are likewise unable to see the difference.
That’s why the Japanese saying should be our town’s motto — the nail that sticks up gets pounded down.
Yet, this isn’t Japan. (In that regard, some of Japan’s not Japan, so to speak.) No matter how much a few want to define part of a America as all of America, it’s not true. Individual liberty and fundamental rights don’t stop at our town line.
One of the people reportedly involved in this drama, scarcely mentioned in these meetings, is someone about whom I have written much, strongly and in satire. I have no idea about the truth of personal conduct in these events, but I do see an irony. (I take no pleasure in it; I merely see it.) Ours is a status quo that can only be defended as a few hundred insist that it must be defended. If not their way, then all other ways are wrong, bad, and intolerable.
These controversies over the Tree Commission could have been resolved without abolition or suspension of that body, without so much personal animosity, and without distorting policy for hurt feelings. If not, if they were forever beyond the reach of our local elite, then what hope have they for significant problems?
Our political life and culture remain as distorted as they have ever been.