Metro Pulse/Editor's Corner/A Failure to Communicate

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It's not the West Bank, but Knoxville has its own divides

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

Your average Knoxvillian watching events unfold, or unravel, in Israel this week might have any number of reactions: confusion, despair, anger, fear, indifference. But however informed or bewildered or personal any local interest is, it is probably joined with a general sense of powerlessness. "They've been fighting for years," the prevailing thinking says. "There's nothing we can do about it."

That is, of course, a great simplification, and not even true. American foreign policy is a key element of the crisis in Israel, and how our elected representatives approach things will have significant influence on the outcome.

But on a more local level, here in our own political spheres, it seems to me there are things we ought to be doing that we are not. Look around the world over the past 10 years: Israelis and Palestinians, Hutus and Tutsis, Serbs and Croats, Russians and Chechens, and on and on and on. If anything has marked the post-Cold War era, it has been the escalation in what are essentially tribal territorial conflicts—and the struggles of the outside world to deal effectively with them. The reality is, we as a species are still much better at fighting each other than we are at respectfully co-existing. In this country, as in most functioning democracies, we have learned to mostly avoid physical violence in our political, philosophical and theological battles, and that is an uncategorical triumph. That the 2000 presidential election, for example, did not result in either rioting or an armed coup is something worth celebrating in the history of human governance.

But not shooting at each other is only a first step, however monumental. The steps that come after it, while more incremental, are just as crucial. That's why the violence in Israel gives me a nauseous feeling when I consider politics in Knoxville. What most distinguishes our local decision-making officials and bodies? Their assorted enmities.

The Sheriff's Department cannot and will not get along with the Knoxville Police Department (and vice-versa). The school board is in a perpetual pissing match with County Commission. The old city-county feuding has cooled off somewhat since the annexation accords were reached, but that was less than two years ago and a lot of resentment still simmers. Our own mayor has made a habit of not getting along with much of anyone. Our business leadership in the Chamber Partnership has sometimes been just as acerbic and aggressive.

I'm not saying that some or all of the parties in these conflicts don't have legitimate concerns. In most of them, there has been a history of bad treatment and resentment going back in tit-for-tat fashion for decades. They've been fighting for years, you know. There's nothing we can do about it.

But ideally under our system of government, "they" and "we" are the same. It is amazing to me that a city population that is paying the salaries of both the police department and sheriff's department has sat around for years and accepted the corrosive bickering of the two agencies. It's equally astonishing that we have been willing to underwrite the increasingly costly turf wars between the school board and Commission. In both cases, there are legitimate issues to be worked out, questions that need to be settled. That does not, and should not, entail the levels of distrust, resentment and childish pride that mark these divides. Is this how adults are supposed to settle their differences?

I'm all in favor of healthy debate. But what goes on in most of these cases is neither of those things. There is little real debate—often, there is no communication at all, except through paid-by-the-hour legal proxies. And the bitter, self-pitying tenor of the conversations that do take place aren't really healthy for anyone. Human conflicts, whether in West Hills or the West Bank, are more alike than they are different. And it seems to me the world right now desperately needs more examples of good-will, good-faith conflict resolution.

I hate to fall back on the old "do it for the children" routine, but I can't help wondering what examples we and our local representatives are setting for any kids who might be aware or concerned enough to pay any attention at all to such things. (I know, I can hear the high school history teachers howling with laughter—but let's just hypothesize that such kids exist.) On the one hand, we mostly provide a laudable model of not killing each other. Good for us. On the other hand, we reinforce again and again the idea that grown men and women who have honest disagreements cannot sit down and work them out reasonably. For reasons no better than wounded prides and fragile egos, we contradict on a daily and weekly basis everything we pretend to teach in our classrooms and living rooms.

I've lost track of the number of times I've called one or another person involved in some local dispute and asked them if they've even talked to the other concerned party, only to be told, "No. And they haven't called me, either." From now on when I hear that, I don't think I'll be able to avoid picturing Yasser Arafat crouched at his desk in his bunker.