Phoenix Burning

...two armies that fight each other is like one large army that commits suicide...

(French soldier Henri Barbusse in his novel "Le Feu", 1915)

I’m pretty well convinced that nothing is going to save the City of Pacific. While I was out of town there was what appeared to be a staged media event in which Pacific police were compelled, due to the city attorney’s instructions, to arrest the mayor for trying to obtain access to records that were being protected so that he wouldn’t continue to destroy them. In the videos were several rabble rousers, including Howard Erickson, Pacific’s former mayor, who was booted out of office eight years ago for his belligerent incompetency, including losing the city’s insurance. With the city’s insurance virtually forfeit for the second time, it appears that Mr. Erickson may be poised to deliver the death blow. This latest soap opera just puts a tidy ribbon atop the city’s coffin.

In the background to this side show is a reported request by Pacific Councilwoman Leanne Guier for an investigation into "violation of  police practices and procedures involving treatment of in-custody individuals." 

Meanwhile, there are reports that a member of the police department appears to be involved in the campaign to recall the very mayor his fellow policemen were arresting. It’s not clear how many other people are playing both sides of the fence. I suspect the insurance carrier is wondering what sorts of things which have been swept under the rug are just waiting to be discovered.

The announcement of the city’s insurance carrier that it will cancel coverage at the end of the year comes a little late. More than two years ago, I told the carrier’s broker that the mayor and public safety director had violated federal law by trying to suppress a civil rights march. And in 2010, at the time the Klickitat County Sheriff’s Office was filing a report stating that they believed Pacific’s public safety director had abused his authority, their attorney was taking depositions that should have curled their hair and kept members of the city council’s Public Safety Committee awake at night. Did Mayor Richard Hildreth really not know? Did he really not tell public safety committee members Gary Hulsey and Clint Steiger?

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing—and, in Pacific, that’s what they did, following the removal of Mr. Erickson eight years ago. The city was on the cusp of developing a healthy body politic, but a charlatan tested the waters with a power grab that told him the council would allow him more power than he was entitled to, and from then on no-one was willing to speak up about abuse of power.

The chickens came home to roost last November, when Cy Sun was elected and descended on the city like the Biblical plague of locusts that tormented Pharoah’s Egypt. Pharoah had it coming, but not necessarily his subjects. In Pacific, a lot of innocent bystanders are now paying the price of the negligence of the people they elected. This sad buffoon has once again betrayed the voters, just as Richard Hildreth did eight years ago and Howard Erickson before him. It never ends.

For myself, I want to start by making amends.

I owe Pacific Partnerships an apology. Yeah, that’s what I said. When did anyone in any position of advantage in Pacific ever apologize to anyone? I’m going to show you how it’s done. An ideal apology has four parts: 

1. You state what you did. 
2. You state what was wrong with what you did. 
3. You state how you feel about it. 
4. And you ask for forgiveness.

Here’s what I did: I said Mayor Cy Sun wasn’t invited to Pacific Days; I was told that, and I believed it. Several people have told me he was indeed invited, and he was invited in such a way that it would be really hard for him to honestly claim he wasn’t. I believe those people.

Here’s what was wrong with what I did: I have had the kind of experiences with Mr. Sun over the past two years that should convince any intelligent person he is about as credible as his predecessor. Like his predecessor, he is less concerned about what is true than he is about winning. I should have fact checked. I knew better. In a moment of weakness I was careless.

Here’s how I feel about what I did: I’m embarrassed and ashamed. I was reckless, and I’m sincerely sorry about it, because I undoubtedly hurt the feelings of some people who are doing good things for the community and deserve positive recognition for their efforts instead of implying they were inconsiderate. That was just wrong.

And here’s my request for forgiveness: I hope that those of you who were shortchanged by my report will honor me by keeping our lines of communication open and giving me and others a chance to help you make this a better community in whatever way I can contribute. God knows you need all the encouragement you can receive. You are swimming against the current.

There. See how easy that was? I did it, and it didn’t hurt a bit. And I meant it. It was sincere.

I hope it serves as an example, because it’s time for a number of other people to apologize as well, including a whole bunch of individuals who were public officials with me and after me and who let the community down by not putting a stop to unethical and tasteless behavior which laid the ground work for what’s going on today. They could have stopped it, and they didn’t.

For a majority of the three-plus decades I lived in Pacific, alcoholics and sometimes disturbed individuals manipulated by those alcoholics have poisoned the politics of the city. Attempts to interdict that behavior have been thwarted by the alcoholics, the disturbed individuals, and the people who tolerated the behavior.

Eight years ago the voters chose to chart a new course and the elected officials flubbed it. Since then the city was told many times of misbehavior;  if there had been an acknowledgement of the transgressions and appropriate apologies made, I don’t think the city would be in the crisis that it now faces. Cy Sun was elected due to the personal failure of many public officials for many years.

Stop the madness! It’s probably too late to save the city. But it isn't too late to begin preparing to rise from the ashes and build a new sense of community. The Romans didn’t necessarily leave Italy just because Rome got sacked. The same will be true of Pacific. Like the mythical Phoenix that was consumed by fire and rose from its own ashes, the community of Pacific may rise from the ashes of the city.