Recently, a nice person asked me what I have learned from my tenure in public service. I usually have a pithy self-deprecating response to those kinds of questions, but not this time. I’m not sure why I answered differently on this occasion. Maybe because we have been wallowing in the heightened cynical contempt of government. Who knows? Perhaps I might have been more thoughtful than usual. Anyway … what I said was that the only true revelation that has dawned on me in the two decades I’ve been engaged in local government is that I have come to understand that virtually every controversy, every conflict and disagreement, comes down to a primal impulse toward territorial protection or expansion.
Some of you might be rolling your eyes and uttering, “Well, duh.” Others might be thinking that this is a reductive and simplistic observation. For me, it was an epiphany.
Many issues that appear complicated and irreconcilable actually result from one or more parties trying to assert dominance or supremacy over another; or, alternately, from a disempowered group trying to achieve parity or even superiority. Seriously, most of these fights are no different than the squabbles that occur in preschool, the only difference being that, as we grow older, we learn to craft more sophisticated, rationalized arguments than the I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I type. Also, the “adult” versions can be extremely dangerous and destructive.
Let’s examine some more benign local examples of territorial strife. Folks who live in Northampton have experienced or participated in the Hamp/Noho divide. It’s a variation on the classic town/gown schism but with new twists. As succeeding generations come into play, the distinctions become even blurrier, but the gist of the conflict is over who gets to identify and define Northampton. “Hamp” is the term of familiarity used by the people who grew up here or at least went through the public schools here. “Noho” is the handle the transplants coined to reflect the New York City arts vibe they were bringing with them. The division also had embedded class and political elements, but essentially it boiled down to who had control of Northampton’s image and who was losing that control. This type of fight plays out in every town and city. And they’re all variations on a theme: who gets to mark the trees.
Speaking of trees, imagine that your neighbor decided that he’s tired of being deprived of natural light from a tree in his yard and you wake up one day to find a piece of your personal landscape irrevocably missing. Do you say to yourself, “Well, things change. Que sera sera”? Or do you seethe and review all the reasons why that tree was critical to your children, the neighborhood and to the planet? And do you find yourself cataloging all the things that tick you off about your neighbor?
I remember when my family moved into a new house in Holyoke. One day after we had lived there for a while, the woman who grew up in the same house before us stopped by and asked if she could revisit the place of her childhood. My brothers and sisters and I tagged along as my mother showed off the kitchen improvements and the new sun deck and the fresh paint colors. We were sure she would be impressed. Instead, her face crumpled and tears drenched her face as she mourned the loss of the spaces that were once hers. I was baffled by her reaction until I experienced something similar when I returned to a house I lived in before. I mean, I was polite and forced a “how nice” smile. I didn’t break down. But I wanted to.
Concord, Massachusetts went the extra mile once upon a time and banned laundry lines because some influential folks felt they were aesthetically inappropriate.
“Make America Great Again” is another expression of territorial primacy when you consider it. Whose America? Great for whom? When was it last great? What changed? What do you mean by great? “Take our country back” is also a declaration that passes for an argument. Who took it? Where did it go? Who’s the “our” in this scenario?
Unlike children in these fights who just yell louder and maybe lash out and then endure a time out, we learn it is more effective to vilify an “other,” mythologize their trespasses, project sinister motives and then (if your ilk is in power), create laws to thwart their evil objectives. And if all else fails, you can say God told you you were right. Just like a god said it was alright to kill 3,000 people in the attacks of September 11th, 2001. And yet another god approved the abduction of children at the Mexican border. Apparently, there are competing messages from different gods about who is meant to live in the Middle East or whose cattle can graze on federal park lands or whether women can drive cars, and so on. That’s how you win a political argument: invoke a deity or a founder or some such entity that can’t dispute your claim. Who can argue with that? Kids don’t have the god card in their arsenal. They just cry, and we call them babies.
When children act out their instinctive territorial impulses, there’s usually an adult there to admonish them or coach them on how to use their indoor voices or to share the water table or not to provoke by intentionally invading someone’s personal space with an errant elbow. After a certain age, though, there’s an expectation that we would learn these forms of tolerance so we could live more successfully as a community. Because there are no sage preschool referees for “grown-ups.” As adults, we act out or call the police or sue the bejeezus out of people. Or, if we have learned anything, we talk to each other; we try to suss out what is the root cause of the conflict and work towards a solution or a compromise.
Government, for better or worse, is supposed to serve as the arbiter that the preschool teacher was back when our mittens had strings. The main purpose is to craft fair rules and facilitate egalitarian coexistence. A balanced use of shared spaces is the ideal. That doesn’t happen all that much, unfortunately. Squeaky wheels and people with influence mostly dictate the laws that govern us, often to the detriment of others who are less empowered.
Anyway, that was my answer. I think that that person will hesitate to even ask me how I’m doing the next time she sees me. And I wouldn’t blame her.
Bill Dwight is a Northampton city councilor and a pie wrangler at the Florence Pie Bar.