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Wednesday, January 3, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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P
I
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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
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The Nugget Newspaper,
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Editor: Jim Cornelius
Production Manager: Leith Easterling
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Owner: J. Louis Mullen
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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.