Wednesday, October 26, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Flaming out
By Craig Rullman
Columnist
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let-
ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be
no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday.
To the Editor:
It is not yet Halloween, but the holidays
are just around the corner and that may mean
holiday gift-giving. I hope when you spend
your holiday dollars, that you might take a few
things into consideration.
In Sisters, we are blessed with a diverse,
eclectic, high-quality abundance of small
businesses. These entities are one of the many
things that lend Sisters its unique feel, indi-
viduality and appeal.
These small businesses employ our locals,
feed families and put roofs over heads.
Yes, in summer we have a thriving tour-
ist trade, however, when winter rolls around,
things tighten up and it can be very difficult to
maintain a small business in this town.
As consumers, when we spend our money
on large, clearing-house websites, or at big-
box stores, we are doing nothing to stimulate
our local economy or to better the town in
which we live.
I would like to ask that this holiday season,
you walk the streets of Sisters.
Go into businesses you drive by but may
have never entered. Investigate the diverse
offerings our dynamic town. Purchase at least
some of your gifts locally.
Who wouldn’t love to receive a gift or gift
certificate from one of our many retail bou-
tiques, our local artists, restaurants, spa/beauty
locations, music venues, health and fitness
centers, lodging options ... the list goes on.
Please, this holiday season, consider stim-
ulating our local economy by shopping the
many local, small businesses that make Sisters
such an amazing place.
Jennifer McCrystal
See LETTERS on page 26
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A column in these pages
(“Looking Outward: Just
Look at the Facts,” Dan
Glode, The Nugget, October
19, page 23) posits that
opposition to HRC is rooted
in genetically inherited
misogyny. The author, after
speculating whether white
males might be “hard-wired
that way,” goes on — in a
bizarre and inescapably rac-
ist twist — to tell us that
white men should move to
the back of the bus.
The operating theory
behind that appalling sug-
gestion is a byproduct of
the secular fundamental-
ism that is eradicating free
speech, re-segregating com-
munities, and ruining col-
lege campuses around the
country. Beneath the banner
of inclusiveness — and just
how one becomes inclusive
by insistence on exclusiv-
ity is a notion you can try to
figure out — the theory sug-
gests, among other things,
that opposition to their
party’s candidate simply
must be based in racism or
misogyny.
The new social funda-
mentalist has, as in Glode’s
piece, completely abandoned
the legacy of Martin Luther
King, who gave his life
attempting to unite by faith
and example, and by lifting
the discussion above myo-
pic divisions. Instead of that
magnificent dream, where
the only judgment is based
on “the content of charac-
ter,” all things must now be
understood in the context
of skin color and plumbing.
Don’t like the female candi-
date? You must hate women.
Don’t like the President?
You must be a racist.
Worse, the adherents of
this shame-based fundamen-
talism like to claim the moral
high ground on both sides of
an argument. The tactic is to
make a claim: “mostly white
men are clinging to power
and don’t want to share,”
begging us to assume that is
both true, and that the alter-
native on offer is some sanc-
tified, untainted, and thor-
oughly righteous other. That
flawed suggestion — even a
cursory study of world his-
tory reveals it as a canard —
is then generally followed
by the claim that because
you are a white man, you
cannot possibly examine
yourself, defend yourself, or
even reasonably address the
proposition.
That’s racism.
What they really want is
for the opponents of their
philosophy, those cling-
ers and deplorables, to shut
up and sit down. Which is
also why they are so fond
of “rules of discourse” and
other such nonsense, so long
as those rules insulate their
ability to project theory as
fact.
What is more, the secu-
lar fundamentalist relies on
wholesale indictment, pro-
jecting their own sentiment
as if it were unassailable,
and as if we all share in their
virtuous condemnations and
self-loathing. They have
become particularly adept
at “virtue signaling,” which
is newspeak for wearing
T-shirts and pasting bumper-
stickers aligning themselves
with one alleged victim class
or another.
Instead of elevating the
conversation, which they
inherently cannot do, these
fundamentalist strains ulti-
mately retreat into a kind of
pathetic and spinning carou-
sel of accusations and pleas.
And always, just underneath
the surface, one detects a
malignant kind of seething.
That seething is also
behind the creation of the
now-widespread university
Star Chambers, where stu-
dents — and even faculty —
can be thrown out of school
for “micro-aggressions” and
any number of other alleged
violations of conduct with-
out even the right to see the
evidence or cross-examine
the accuser. The new breed
of social warrior loves that
take on justice, because
nothing trashes their theory
faster than an actual and
thorough investigation of
the facts.
Not least of the problems,
beyond asserting that oppo-
sition to a political candidate
is rooted in an entire race’s
DNA, is that at the end of the
day, this philosophical bent
can’t help but remain essen-
tially accusatory and divi-
sive, lumping entire classes
of people into labeled bas-
kets, and therefore perpetu-
ating exactly that which it
purports to dislike.
We can only hope that
this new kind of militant
fundamentalist philosophy
— which might properly be
understood as a cult — will
ultimately flame out in the
face of the more common
desire to seek mutual pros-
perity and success.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.