House Speaker Scott Saiki sounded almost wistful.
Last week, Saiki held a press conference to condemn the alleged actions of two state lawmakers, former Sen. J. Kalani English and former Rep. Ty Cullen, who are expected to plead guilty to charges in connection with accepting bribes to influence legislation.
Saiki said the usual things about being shocked by the news, pledging to root out corruption in the Legislature, and working to win back the public’s trust.
And he said something sadly resonant, a thing that many people have said over the years about all manner of terrible things that have happened in the islands:
“For those of us who were born and raised in Hawaii, we want to believe that these things only happen on the mainland, not in Hawaii.”
So much regret in those words, almost a loss of faith. And so, so familiar. Who among us hasn’t said the same thing in one form or another?
Of course Saiki knows better. Everyone who has ever entertained that thought knows better. It’s not about being deluded or naive. Maybe it’s about desperately wanting to hold on to the idea that Hawaii is different and special and so far away as to be protected from all the bad stuff.
The notion that “it would never happen in Hawaii” is probably just as common among Hawaii residents who weren’t born and raised in the islands. It’s shared by people who recently moved here with their hopeful image of a simple paradise where everybody is nice and trustworthy and happy all the time.
But of course it has happened here. We’ve seen it with our own eyes, but it’s still shocking. It’s as though we’re all completely sold on the idea that government in Hawaii is hopelessly inept, but we’re surprised when two politicians have the gumption to pull off something so dirty (even though they were slippy enough to get caught and pathetic enough to sell their political souls for such small amounts of money.)
Government corruption has happened many times before in Hawaii. Indeed, every news outlet in town carried a sidebar story listing all the other times a Hawaii lawmaker was caught doing something stinky, going back to the days of Andy Mirikitani and Rene Mansho 20 years ago.
Saiki knows that. Everybody knows that. But still, that wishful, almost childlike belief persists until it gets slapped in the face with the reality of English, the former Senate majority leader, getting stopped by federal agents and hiding a stack of cash under the floor mat of his car.
The “it doesn’t happen here” notion is applied to so many other issues. They’ve been saying that in Canada all week.
In 2020, in the context of the national conversation about Black lives lost at the hands of law enforcement, former Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard was grilled about race bias in the Honolulu Police Department. “Does it affect us here in Hawaii?” she asked. “I mean it does, but I think a lot less so than on the mainland.”
Last year, when a young man was stabbed to death in broad daylight on an East Honolulu street, the reaction in the community was shock that something like that could happen in Hawaii Kai, where the most common police incidents are for things like people accidentally hitting the gas instead of the brake and driving a car through a storefront window. (Here’s one Hawaii Kai car-through-window accident. Here’s another. And another. And another.)
When neighbors were searching for little Isabella Kalua, the missing girl who was allegedly killed by her adoptive parents, one community member told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “Nothing really happens like this in Waimanalo.”
And raise your hand if you were shocked at local stories of people spitting at librarians trying to enforce the state’s mask mandate or parents yelling at school employees about mask policies or people getting violent on interisland flights. Not here. Not us. Not folks we know.
The sad truth is that Hawaii is susceptible to corruption, bad guys, crime, violence and mayhem just like any other place.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t try to be different.
But in order to try for better, we have to acknowledge the reality that “it,” whatever it is, can indeed happen here, that it already has, and currently does.
