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Wednesday, November 14, 2018 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.
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To the Editor:
While it wasn’t reported, there was a fire at
Zimmerman Butte gun area, Friday, October
26, at 5:30 p.m. Fortunately one of my neigh-
bors called it in and the Sisters Fire District
responded and extinguished it.
Several people reported “explosive noise”
— likely Tannerite — before the fire was
reported. A similar fire was reported two years
ago.
This should make all in Sisters nervous.
While we have seen an increase in popula-
tion and visitors coincident with increased fire
danger, the Forest Service has not changed its
management practices of these gun ranges.
The law is clear on gun use, especially on
federal land, and I am not debating gun use,
but corralling shooting into one location for
hours a day causes noise pollution, physical
harm for people with PTSD and potential fire
danger, within a mile of Sisters.
I would urge the Forest Service to do a bet-
ter job of managing these areas. They neither
detected or extinguished this fire and do noth-
ing to be good neighbors and manage what
they describe as Sisters’ recreational gun area,
nor have they investigated the unlawful use of
Tannerite according to their dispatch center.
Stephen King
Editor’s note: The Nugget has contacted
Sisters District Ranger Ian Reid regarding this
incident and will report on it next week.
s
s
s
To the Editor:
Thank you, Jim Anderson, for your won-
derful words about our amazing country.
To my fellow Sisters-Americans: Please,
let’s remember that deep down we want most
of the same things, life, liberty and the right to
be happy. We have so much, just being blessed
to live here. Let’s smile and say “hi” when we
see each other and keep Sisters the friendly
town I moved to 29 years ago.
Have a great day,
Jean Nave
Sisters Weather Forecast
Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Mostly Sunny
Mostly Sunny
Mostly Sunny
AM Clouds/PM Sun Mostly Sunny
59/64
59/32
56/32
46/22
51/24
Monday
Mostly Sunny
51/25
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It is perhaps the cen-
tral irony of our politics
today: We live in an incred-
ibly polarized and partisan
moment, but our political
parties have never been
weaker.
As odd as it sounds,
political parties in democ-
racies have an important
anti-democratic function.
Traditionally, the parties
shaped the choices put to
voters. Long before vot-
ers decided anything in the
primary or general elec-
tions, party bosses worked
to groom good candidates,
weed out bad ones, organize
interests and frame issues.
In the modern era, the
story of party decline usually
begins in the aftermath of the
1968 presidential election.
The move toward primaries
and the democratic selec-
tion of delegates took power
away from the bosses.
After Watergate, there
were more reforms, curb-
ing the ability of the parties
to raise and spend money
freely. This led to the rise of
political action committees,
which raise cash independent
of the formal party structure.
As Sen. Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) said during the floor
debate over the McCain-
Feingold campaign finance
bill in 2001, “We haven’t
taken a penny of money out
of politics. We’ve only taken
the parties out of politics.”
Outside groups —the
National Rifle Association,
Planned Parenthood, unions,
etc. — often do more to
effectively organize vot-
ers around single issues or
personalities than the par-
ties do. The Kochs, Tom
Steyer, George Soros and
Sheldon Adelson serve as
party bosses, only outside
the parties.
Technology is another,
less obvious, force siphoning
power from the parties. As
political historian Michael
Barone has noted, the tele-
phone dealt a grievous blow
to political conventions,
where insiders have outsize
power.
“Until the 1960s, the
national convention was a
communications medium,”
Barone writes. “Political
leaders in the various states
seldom met each other, out-
side of sessions of Congress,
during the four years between
presidential elections.”
The telephone eliminated
the need for the face-to-face
negotiations. Today, political
conventions are little more
than infomercials for presi-
dential candidates.
The internet and cable TV
have accelerated the eclips-
ing of parties. Opinion web-
sites and TV and radio hosts
now do more to shape issues
and select candidates than
the parties do.
And yet, Americans keep
talking about partisan poli-
tics as if the parties are in
charge, and base voters on
the left and the right keep
railing against the party
establishments like mobs
unaware that they’re kicking
dead horses.
When you take politi-
cal power out of the par-
ties, other actors seize it.
When wielded by people
who aren’t supposed to be
in the politics business, that
power corrupts. This is why
every Academy Awards cer-
emony is peppered with asi-
nine political jeremiads, and
why late-night comedy hosts
serve as de facto Democratic
Party organizers.
It’s why people like Jerry
Falwell Jr., the president of
Liberty University, act like
social-gospel ward heelers.
It’s why the cable news net-
works spend so much of their
time rallying voters in one
direction or another. And it’s
why countless pundits and
allegedly objective reporters
serve as unofficial political
consultants.
It’s also why Donald
Trump could leverage his
celebrity to seize the GOP
nomination, and why some-
one like Oprah Winfrey
could be next.
There are other, larger
forces at work. The decline
of strong independent insti-
tutions—religious, civic
and familial—has people
searching for other outlets to
find a sense of meaning and
belonging. Identity politics,
populism and nationalism
are filling that void.
That’s happened before,
but when it did, the parties
were there to filter, constrain
and channel those passions
in a healthy direction. The
Potemkin parties can’t, or
won’t, do that anymore. The
result is a nation of partisans
decrying partisanship.
© 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.
