Wednesday, November 23, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Controlling the
narrative
By Terry Weygandt
Guest Columnist
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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.
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To the Editor:
I want to express my thanks to Daniel
Stroemple, who rang my doorbell on Veterans
Day, with the offer of a pie that he had pur-
chased expressly to give to veterans. As I
understand it, Daniel ordered several desserts
when the Sisters High School baseball team
was selling them as a fundraiser and paid
for them himself so that he could honor his
grandfather and father by donating these des-
serts to Sisters-area veterans.
In talking with him, I learned that his
grandfather was a World War II and Korea
War veteran (whom he did not know because
his grandfather died before Daniel was born),
and I learned that Daniel’s father is a Vietnam
veteran.
Daniel is a SHS freshman and plays on the
baseball team, and I can testify that he is a
credit to his team. His grandfather would be
honored by his sacrifice and extremely proud
of him. I told him to tell his father and mother
that he has brought great honor on them as par-
ents who have raised such a fine young man.
Thank you, Daniel.
John Miller, Col, USAF (Ret)
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To the Editor:
I was a little nervous to open our
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My niece, a Trump sup-
porter, as is all my family
in rural Ohio, saw an arti-
cle I posted on Facebook
titled “Why We Grieve
Today,” and as you might
imagine we had a long,
heated discussion and
ended up not really agree-
ing on anything. How is it
we see the world so differ-
ently when we come from
the same background and
have the same values? I
concluded that we each
get our information from
sources that align with our
viewpoints and rarely get
information outside our
media bubble.
The difference, though,
and the point of this let-
ter, is that conservative
Americans largely follow
Republican-leaning news
sources that have con-
trolled the narrative in the
United States for 30 years
with misinformation, fear
and outright lies. This is
how Trump became presi-
dent. Hillary Clinton was
the most investigated (and
exonerated) politician in
history.
The Benghazi investi-
gations dragged on lon-
ger than the investigation
into the September 11,
2001, terrorist attacks, the
assassination of President
Kennedy, the attack on
Pearl Harbor, the response
to Hurricane Katrina.
What was the result of
the FBI reviewing 30,000
emails and millions of
email fragments? A rep-
rimand. You would have
thought she’d killed some-
body. (Oh right, she’s been
accused of that, too!)
The result is this vis-
ceral, crazy hatred of
Hillary Clinton. We were
(and still are) constantly
reminded that she lies.
She lies. She lies. She lies.
The Republican character
assassination stuck, but we
all bought into it to some
extent because when you
hear something over and
over again you tend to
believe it, whether or not
it’s true.
The most obvious his-
torical example of media
spewing hate and misinfor-
mation is Nazi Germany,
who were masters at con-
trolling the message and
turned political propa-
ganda into an artform. But
a more recent example is
Rwanda in 1994.
Rwanda’s hate radio
and an extremist newspa-
per convinced the majority
group Hutu to hunt down
and kill nearly a million
people — men, women
and children — in a five-
week span. Using lies and
fostering an environment
of fear, anger and hatred,
the Hutu-controlled media
justified the extermination
of the minority group Tutsi
on the grounds they posed
a threat to the majority.
The media was able to con-
vince ordinary people who
had never killed before
to turn on their friends,
neighbors and even fam-
ily members, rationalizing
that they were defending
themselves, protecting
their country and restoring
what they believed justly
belonged to their own eth-
nic group. Sound familiar?
There have been more
than 700 cases of
hateful harassment
and intimidation in the
United States since
Election Day.
— Southern Poverty
Law Center
There have been more
than 700 cases of hateful
harassment and intimida-
tion in the United States
since Election Day, reports
the Southern Poverty
Law Center. Last Sunday,
when asked about the hate
crimes committed in his
name, the president-elect
was “saddened” and told
his supporters to stop. On
Monday, Trump named
a white nationalist as
his senior White House
advisor.
So much for reining in
the hate.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.