Convenient Untruths

Last Tuesday, I and my neighbors committed a sin – or more precisely, an injury – against community residents that some consider dirty and scary. Sadly, these residents are seen as little more than a nest of uncooperative “campers” who refuse to integrate themselves into polite society. So, we opted, as decreed by our elected representatives, to run the unruly rabble off the Bulb and out of town.

Although I abhor the decision, I use the term “we” because all of us are responsible for, as Albany’s city seal describes, our “urban village by the bay.” In a small town, there is no room for us-and-them or winners-and losers. There is just enough room for us to try and get along as sympathetically as we can. Consequently, we share the blame for – and shame of – bad decisions made and harmful actions taken for our supposed collective good.

At the September 3rd city council meeting, we told ourselves a series of convenient untruths, a string of thin fabrications that we layered over our hearts and papered over our minds. We protected, as best we could, our reputations for circumspect thought and well-considered rationale. We safeguarded our veneers of emotional balance and intellectual equanimity. We bolstered ourselves against disagreeable definition and hysterical mischaracterization.

Then, we bit down onto bullets of pragmatism, realism, and adult behavior. We directed civil servants to creatively, effectively and, if possible, humanely, enforce a “no camping” ordinance reminiscent of Jim Crow, Anti-Oakie, Sundown towns and Broken Window laws created to keep out undesirables. In the coming few weeks, while city staff members dirty their administrative hands, we will be left free to pursue our lives, livelihoods and happiness in the comfort of our modest homes and small businesses.

When we commit a sin, we rarely acknowledge it as expedience, selfishness, neglect, or willful ignorance. Instead, we deem it sadly necessary and unfortunately complicated. We tell ourselves that we are doing our duty; upholding the letter of law; acting for the betterment of the community; protecting the frightened, vulnerable or uncomfortable; safeguarding health and safety; honoring those who have admirably dedicated themselves to creating a lasting public good to be shared by all.

We murmur and mumble about proceeding with the best – if bureaucratically encrypted -- information available. We choke down niggling doubts about insufficient data making impossible informed decision. We throw up our hands and proclaim we have done everything that can be expected. We toss just enough money at the problem to paper over our culpability for a profound failure to ensure that even a single person among 60-plus Bulb residents has been housed -- or is likely to be sheltered -- as a result of our sincere, if tepid, efforts.  

When we injure others, we see it as banal, as something everybody is doing, as mildly but, thank goodness, temporarily uncomfortable. All but the most delusional idealists – like quaint individuals who might read Henry David Thoreau in public – understand that the wisest course of action is to hold our collective noses and get on with it. In the process of politics – in this instance crudely defined as a competition among so-called interest groups -- seasoned leaders prefer the value of a few droplets of prim discourse over an ocean of raucous debate about what we truly, and honestly, value. We realize it is much better to feign democracy than practice its messy and unpredictable realities, much better to piggy-back artificial consensus than to forge real agreement with moral force.

As sinners, we see ourselves as nothing other than wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, church-goers and environmentalists, coaches and teachers, musicians and pot-throwers, as people invested in and connected to most others in sincere and meaningful ways. We have feelings, too. We don’t want to be considered callous, selfish, fearful, means-spirited, narrow-minded, as driven by aversion rather than compassion, as being yoked to an illusion of being different, unique, and special rather than the truly universal experience of birth, death, and in-between.

We make concerted efforts not to understand but to appear understanding, to appear open-minded yet unable to recast our thinking into broader terms, to appear to appreciate compromise yet stay unwilling to relinquish some semblance of control and predictable outcome, to articulate concern but remain unwilling to go too far out on a limb for a stranger.

As sinners, we repress the unsettling knowledge that we live in an era of lies, that we occupy Orwellian space, that we no longer celebrate truth but instead settle for differences of opinion and alternative points of view. We conflate politeness with approval, silence with acquiescence, and civility with agreement. God forbid that we appear disagreeable, much better to get along for the sake of the public good. If getting along means going along with a blatant injury to others but a small sin against self and conscience, so be it.

It is much better to act the good neighbor, to run the riff-raff out of town, to say “not our problem,” “not our concern,” the mouth platitudes that abject poverty and its attendant mal-adaptations are, after all, matters of “personal choice.” The convenient untruth that someone might choose to “camp” inside a cardboard box or tent or plywood hovel, to dumpster dive or scrabble through our garbage cans becomes a much less bitter pill to swallow.

So let the rabble eat moldy cake and wash it down with curdled milk. But let them do it elsewhere. Meanwhile, let me enjoy my soon-to-be submerged shoreline in peace. Let me cling to my vision of a hard-recovered landfill as pristine enclave that cannot possibly remain urban park if I am forced to share it with grimy “privatizers.” For what I want is neither odd nor exceptional. It is normal, regular, natural, mainstream, comfortable, and most importantly, my divine right to comfort.