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Wednesday, July 12, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Jonah
Goldberg
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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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:
In response to Mr. Kopec’s letter, it is
surprising to me that people in Sisters have
already forgotten that the traffic has backed up
to Tollgate every summer for years.
I suppose that it is a relief to finally have
something to blame it on. Please put the blame
where it belongs on downtown Sisters where
the traffic cannot move through town without
dozens of stops for pedestrians. I, too, have sat
at DQ and I am pleased to say that I think the
roundabout is working.
Diana Pepperling
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s
s
To the Editor:
Re: “Am I ready? Facing death and grief,”
The Nugget, July 5, page 37:
This is a wonderful, thoughtful reflection.
As a teenager I was blessed to know a
Methodist church leader who was slowly
dying of leukemia. I’ve known few people
who were so full of life. She once said to me,
“You can never really live until you’ve come
to grips with dying.”
The energy we waste trying to avoid the
difficult realities of life frequently cause more
problems for us and those we love than it is
worth. Peace does indeed come from facing
uncomfortable topics.
Thanks for this article.
Fr. Joseph Farber
Transfiguration Episcopal Church
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s
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To the Editor:
It should be illegal for the city to block the
only effective route to/from Central Oregon
for an event. This is no different or even worse
than protesters blocking highways.
There should be a way to bypass the entire
town (and not just one within the city).
Sisters is the worst!
Daniel Bower
Sisters Weather Forecast
Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
86/50
88/49
92/52
91/52
90/50
87/na
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During President Trump’s
speech in Warsaw, Poland,
on Thursday, he memori-
alized Pope John Paul II’s
momentous 1979 visit to the
city.
For many historians, the
Polish-born pope’s mass in
Victory Square, more than
anything else, set in motion
the events that led to the
fall of the Berlin Wall a
decade later and the disso-
lution of the Soviet Union
soon thereafter. The people
in attendance knew exactly
what President Trump meant
when he spoke of how the
millions of Poles attending
that mass “did not ask for
wealth. They did not ask for
privilege. Instead, one mil-
lion Poles sang three simple
words: ‘We want God.’”
But I wasn’t in the audi-
ence; I was watching it on
TV and following Twitter’s
response to the speech. It
was remarkable how many
people immediately assumed
Trump was talking crazy or
just making stuff up (I am
paraphrasing very charitably
here).
I understand that
response. Trump often does
say crazy things. He does
make stuff up — but usually
not in prepared texts at big
events.
It struck me how a lot
of our political polariza-
tion is fueled by plain old
ignorance.
Now, ignorance gets a
bad rap. All ignorance means
is that you lack knowledge
about something. Ignorance
isn’t necessarily something
to be proud of, but it need
not be a cause for embarrass-
ment or shame, either. I’m
pretty ignorant about botany,
the history of the Republic of
Chad, the entire Kardashian
oeuvre and countless other
things. None of this burdens
my conscience much.
The problem is that igno-
rance, being the absence of
knowledge, is a vacuum,
and nature abhors a vacuum.
“The greatest enemy of
knowledge is not ignorance;
it is the illusion of knowl-
edge,” Daniel Boorstin, one
of my favorite historians,
once noted.
It is a common human
foible to think you know
more than you do and to
assume that when someone,
particularly someone you
don’t like, says something
you don’t understand that the
fault must be in the speaker,
not the listener. “It’s a uni-
versal law—intolerance is
the first sign of an inad-
equate education,” observed
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “An
ill-educated person behaves
with arrogant impatience,
whereas truly profound edu-
cation breeds humility.”
Ideological and political
polarization is a big concern
these days, and commenta-
tors on the right and left have
chewed the topic to masti-
cated pulp. But it occurs to
me that one unappreciated
factor is widespread histori-
cal ignorance, and the arro-
gant impatience of reaching
conclusions before thinking.
The instantaneity of TV and
Twitter only amplifies the
problem.
For instance, on the
Fourth of July, NPR’s
“Morning Edition” tweeted
out the text of the Declaration
of Independence, 140 char-
acters at a time. The angry
responses, from left and
right, were a thing to behold.
“Are you drunk?” “So,
NPR is calling for revolu-
tion,” “Glad you’re being
defunded, your show was
never balanced,” and so on.
World War II and the
Cold War, particularly
Vietnam, used to define the
intellectual framework for
how we understood many
events. For people in their
30s, that framework changed
to the Iraq War and the War
on Terror.
I once heard a story
second-hand of a general
who was talking to an audi-
ence full of 20-somethings.
He was explaining how the
War on Terror challenged
his generation’s mindset.
“I spent most of my career
worrying about the Fulda
Gap,” he said. To which one
“educated” fellow reportedly
replied, “I know that Gap!
It’s in a mall near my house.”
The Fulda Gap is the
location in the German low-
lands where the Soviets were
most likely to launch an
invasion of Europe.
Today, we face a multi-
tude of challenges, at home
and abroad, that can only be
met by people with a modi-
cum of historical literacy. If
only Harry Potter could cast
a spell to give it to us.
© 2017 Tribune Content
Agency, LLC
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.