In a weird way, I feel guilty about making fun of Carroll Fife. I mean, she makes it so easy, because she says such silly stuff. Lately she’s been moaning a lot about how misunderstood she is. I don’t think anybody misunderstands Carroll Fife. The reason we distrust her is because we understand her all too well.
It’s not just because she’s a reverse racist—her antagonism towards White people, especially White men, is obvious. It isn’t because her far-left brand of progressivism is out of step with the rest of America. In fact, I kind of admire her stubbornness. No, it’s the underlying framework of her psyche—the rage, the tunnel vision--which makes so many people not want to work with her.
For example, in the latest San Francisco Chronicle coverage of her, the reporter—clearly a fan—says Fife has “been determining who[m] she can trust in city government, and who[m] she can’t.” That is Captain Queeg-style paranoia, and it doesn’t make for the kind of cooperative understanding with others that an effective politician needs to build coalitions and get things done. It’s more like right wing intolerance; Fife is the Steve Bannon of the left.
She claims to feel like she’s “stranded on an island.” Well, there’s a simple explanation for that: People don’t like Fife and don’t want to work with her. No one stranded her anywhere; she strands herself by her unpleasantness and extremism.
She continues to whine about “the A’s unwillingness to talk to her” about Howard Terminal. That’s not true. Anybody who’s followed the Howard Terminal saga knows that the team’s management has reached out to all the relevant communities in Oakland more than any other development in the city’s history. The reason the A’s are reluctant to waste their time engaging with Fife is, well, see the last sentence in the above paragraph.
She continues her hate campaign against cops. She told the Chronicle reporter (who found the quote oh, so amusing), “It's like those people who go and say, ‘I'm going to become a cop, and I'm going to change the culture.’ Shut the f—k up. No, you're not.’" Vulgarities aside, this statement of Fife’s shows the true pathology of her thinking. I’ve met a lot of cops. There are many fine men and women in OPD, especially the younger ones, who are determined to “change the culture” to one of greater empathy, respect and diversity. Chief Armstrong is leading that noble charge. So Carroll Fife, you “shut the f--k up.” You literally don’t know what you’re talking about. The culture at OPD is changing before your very eyes. If you can’t see that, you’re blind. And if you can see it but still deny it, you’re willful.
She gripes that her colleagues on the City Council “absorb what I do by either co-opting it and putting their names on it, and saying that it was their idea. Or, just completely ignoring me, or just obstructing me.” This is obviously related to her paranoia, but it also ties in with her acute sense of grievance, as though anyone who disagrees with her on any issue is personally attacking her. That’s Trumpian. I don’t see anyone on the Council “ignoring” Fife. Certainly her BFFs Bas, Kaplan and Thao aren’t ignoring her; they’re The Squad of Oakland politics.
Some of Fife’s analysis of issues is spot-on, and I admire that. Her problem, as I said above, is psychological: she can never admit she’s wrong, or be open to criticism; she shows a stubborn unwillingness to compromise, and—for someone who complains the A’s won’t talk to her—she’s rudely dismissive of having civil conversations with people who might disagree with her—me, for instance. Her sympathy for underdogs—renters, homeless people, people of color—is nice, but Fife fails to understand that others have rights, too: landlords, people who don’t want their neighborhoods overwhelmed with encampments citizens who want greater police protection, employers who, after all, provide the jobs and the tax base that keeps Oakland alive. And White people: Fife seems to feel that, after centuries of domination, it’s time for Whites to feel some pain. To one of Fife’s leftward orientation, these latter groups are pond scum: she doesn’t care about them, and it’s all a function of her rigidity, her ideological obsessions, her uncompromising biases—so typical of extremists of both the left and the right. It’s Carroll Fife’s way or the highway.
We simply don’t need politicians like Fife. There’s a Mussolini-like fascism about her: she’ll make the trains run on time, but a lot of people may have to be hurt in the process. I don’t think it’s too late for Carroll Fife to change course and be more open, more compliant, more tolerant; she’s still a relatively young woman, with a good future in politics, should she want it. But she’s going to have to look long and hard in the mirror and accept some truths about herself that are unpleasant.
Steve Heimoff