Give my tale a chance to develop before you judge. Wisdom, foolishness, belief, incredulity, Light, Darkness, hope, and despair are all present in our small, Midwestern hamlet and that Middle Eastern burg, albeit in different measure.

“In short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only,” wrote Dickens about London and Paris—my comparison likely received only in the lowest degree.

The divisiveness confronting Gaza is brutally violent and harrowing. Haze, contrarily, confronts discord and disruptive dissent. The former faces Israeli invasion, the latter an invasion by big wind. Gaza’s history is rife with acrimonious bloodshed. Our enmity is more recent and less sanguinary.

Both sides blame the other for Israel’s recent invasion of Gaza. Each offers facts, international law, and moral codes to defend its prerogative. Neither is remotely convinced by even a solitary justification proffered by the other.

Outside observers, mired in their own agendas and ideologies, cannot but help take sides and broker their own solutions. Careful investigation that gives itself fully to one side and then the other likely would find some truth in both sides.

Hamas formally ended the cease-fire. They fired rockets daily, killing and wounding Israeli civilians. They explicitly repudiate the legitimate existence of Israel. Gaza has been a regular staging ground for “suicide bombers,” who have devastated Israel.

Israel blockaded the Gaza Strip for 18 months, almost breaking its health, energy, and water infrastructure, according to observers, and bringing it near humanitarian crisis. In order to reach Hamas, Israel indiscriminately blockaded all Gaza and necessarily targeted civilians.

On the night of U.S. elections, writes the Irish Times, Israel broke the cease-fire and killed six Palestinians. Others suggest Israel repeatedly violated the agreement, over 150 incidents, while Hamas did so nearly 40 times.

The ferocious Israeli air campaign and subsequent invasion of Gaza have created a monumental humanitarian crisis, killing and wounding numerous Palestinian civilians, especially children. Israel blames Hamas’ tactical use of Mosques, schools, hospitals, and civilian neighborhoods to hide military targets.

“Thus did [Israel and Hamas] conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures—the creatures of this chronicle among the rest—along the roads that lay before them,” detailed Dickens of not so different time and places. Great and small always depend on perspective.

Haze’s grand wind controversy overshadows even the scandalous staging of “The Vagina Monologues” several years back. A much smaller minority, then, took umbrage at heathen words uttered about women’s nether regions. Aghast!

This time though, the very survival of our community is threatened, its health, welfare, and moral fiber on the line, at least according to some opponents of Iberdrola’s wind project. Scientific fact and economic wisdom tell a tale of despair, should evil Iberdrola succeed.

Stalwart wind opponents, many figuring prominently on these pages, sound clarion calls weekly, denying even a scintilla of truth in supporters’ ramblings. Many approach neighbors and “experts” alike with incredulity and dismiss their arguments as mere foolishness.

The most ardent wind supporters also enlist scientific fact and economic wisdom to their cause. Their hopes for our future are spectacular and their dismissal of opponents equally incredulous. How anyone but Luddites could stand in the way of such obvious technological (green) progress, they wonder.

Both sides castigate the other as unethical, immoral, and self-serving. This dispute transcends mere development and planning, reaching the level of Light versus Darkness. Motives are questioned, aspersions cast. Compromise means only agree with us.

The disputes in these two cities are irresolvable, all sides intractable in the face of their Truth and righteousness. Why, you ask, are these controversies any different than those that face human beings living together everywhere, always? Exactly!

Human community inexorably tends toward conflict. Our fundamental way, observed Heraclitus, is strife. Perhaps death, destruction, and malevolence are our inevitable course. Then what?

Do we give ourselves over completely to the good fight or do we overcome ourselves, overcome humanity? Can beautiful cities everywhere and their brilliant peoples ever rise from this abyss? Or, does anything go?

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”