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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 3, 2018)
2 Wednesday, January 3, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O Editorial… A year for resilience 2017 was no picnic in Sisters. We started the year half-frozen and bur- ied under snowdrifts. Many local resi- dents found winter intruding into their homes thanks to ice dams and leaks — and some of them struggled to get the dam- age repaired all the way into the following fall. The Milli Fire — and a host of other blazes across the region — left us chok- ing on smoke for weeks — and choked off the busy heart of the season for many local businesses. Cherished cultural events like the Sisters Folk Festival were called off. 2017 demanded considerable resilience from Sisters — from individuals and from the community at large. It would be nice to think that 2018 would go easier on us, but we can’t take that for granted. It’s good to be prepared and to practice all of the actions and qualities that make for resilience. Individual prepared- ness is always beneficial (all that prepara- tion for the Eclipse-olypse That Wasn’t isn’t wasted), but more important still are main- taining the ties that bind as a community. We’re lucky to live in a community that’s still small enough and cohesive enough that we know our neighbors and can look out for one another. And it’s those ties that ultimately make us resilient in the face of whatever Mother Nature or the mysteries of economics dish out. Consider putting “build resilience” on the list of New Year’s Resolutions. If history is any guide, we’re going to need it. Jim Cornelius, Editor Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Mostly cloudy Chance rain Chance rain Chance rain Chance rain Partly sunny 40/28 40/29 40/27 39/23 39/24 39/30 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Editor: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Graphic Design: Jess Draper Advertising: Karen Kassy Accounting: Erin Bordonaro Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2018 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. N Jonah Goldberg American Voices On his trip to the Middle East in May, President Trump, along with the Saudi king and the president of Egypt, laid his hands on a glowing white orb for two minutes. The image was like a mix of J.R.R. Tolkien and 1970s low-budget Canadian sci-fi. It looked like they were calling forth powerful eldritch energies from the chthonic depths or perhaps the forbidden zone. Ever since then, when things have gotten weird, I’ve credited the Orb. When The Guardian reported that sex between Japanese snow monkeys and Sika deer may now constitute a new “behavioral tradi- tion,” I tweeted, “the Orb has game, you can’t deny it.” When Roy Moore, the GOP Alabama Senate candi- date, was plausibly accused of preying on teenagers and many evangelical leaders ral- lied to his defense, I admired the Orb’s cunning. And when the bunkered Moore decided to give one of his only inter- views to a 12-year-old girl, I sat back and marveled at the Orb’s dark sense of humor. But I know in my heart that it’s not the Orb’s fault things have gotten so weird, for the simple reason that rampant weirdness predates the Orb-touching by years. I have a partial theory as to why, and it doesn’t begin with Trump. It begins with a failure of elites and the insti- tutions they run. Nearly three-fourths of Americans cannot identify all three branches of the federal government, accord- ing to an Annenberg Public Policy Center poll. One in three Americans can’t name a single branch of govern- ment. More than a third of Americans can’t name any of their rights under the First Amendment. Multiple sur- veys find that Americans, particularly younger Americans, are increasingly ambivalent, or downright hostile, to free speech and democracy. Partisan loyalty has radi- cally intensified. Some stud- ies find that partisan iden- tification is now at least as predictive of behavior and attitudes as race or gender. These trends have been in the pipeline for a long time, and while one can point a curmudgeonly fin- ger of blame at the people, particularly these kids today, that wouldn’t be fair. Many older Americans haven’t exactly been model citizens either. The real blame falls to elites of all stripes and ages — political, journalistic, economic and educational. Every generation has a responsibility to instruct the next on what is important. As an empirical matter, they — we — failed. The failure runs deeper, though. Throughout American history, institu- tions outside of the gov- ernment — Alexis de Tocqueville called them “associations” — have played a vital role in bind- ing people together and giv- ing them a sense of meaning and rootedness. Our politics, both national and local, were always downstream of these institutions. That intricate ecosystem has been supplanted by vir- tual communities, which serve not so much to edu- cate and civilize but to rein- force pre-established beliefs. Elites who once guided media outlets, universities, even rotary clubs to temper and channel anger have been replaced by leaders who are more like followers, chasing the online mobs wherever they want to go. And all eyes are on Washington to solve our problems. Our politics, in other words, are upstream now. The norms we’ve come to rely on no longer match the landscape. Like Japanese snow monkeys, we’re cre- ating new “behavioral traditions.” In this, Trump is less an aberration than a leader for his time. In his rhetorical contempt for free speech, his ignorance of basic con- stitutional facts, his addic- tion to drama and ratings, his personalization of every political question and con- flict, and his uncanny ability to bring out the same quali- ties in his biggest detractors, he breathes new life into H.L. Mencken’s definition of democracy as “the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” © 2018 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.
