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Wednesday, December 12, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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EARLY HOLIDAY DEADLINES FOR THE NUGGET
The Nugget will be closed
on Tuesday, December 25
and Tuesday, January 1.
Early deadline for display advertising and the
events calendar for the issue of December 26 is
Thursday, December 20 at 5 p.m.
Deadline for classified advertising, announcements,
letters to the editor and press releases for the issue of
December 26 is Friday, December 21 at 12 p.m.
Early deadline for display advertising and the
events calendar for the issue of January 2 is
Thursday, December 27 at 5 p.m.
Deadline for classified advertising, announcements,
letters to the editor and press releases for the issue of
January 2 is Friday, December 28 at 12 p.m.
Happy
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Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writerʼs 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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:
As Chairman of the Sisters Kiwanis
Food Share, I am writing to remind every-
one involved, the day we are giving out the
certificates for a Christmas Dinner, the Fire
Department is handing out toys and Furry
Friends are remembering pets is coming up
soon: Saturday December 22 from 10 a.m. to
5 p.m. Remember the date!
If you havenʼt filled out an application you
can still get one at the Food Bank, Wednesday,
December 12 from noon to 1 p.m., Thursday
during Food Bank hours, FAN office at
the school until Friday and at Sisters Fire
Department. The deadline, if you have chil-
dren, is Friday December 15 to give the Fire
Department time to shop and wrap in time for
December 22.
Last year we had almost 200 applications,
but at the end of the day of distribution, we
had 28 envelopes left; the Fire Department had
half-dozen bags of presents and Furry Friends
hauled a lot of pet food back to their storage.
We spent two days calling numerous times try-
ing to get everything where it was supposed
to be. It was stressful at a time that should be
joyful. So, if you sign up, PLEASE show up!
Naomi and I have decided if you donʼt
make arrangements to pick up at a different
time, we will not hold the certificates. We
will make reminder calls the day of distribu-
tion, but not after. If they are not picked up on
Saturday, December 22, they will be used to
purchase future food for the Food Bank.
This is a gift given by the community that
is given with love. Hayden Homes deserves a
huge thank-you for making this possible. We
want everyone to have the best Christmas ever.
See LETTERS on page 29
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N
Jonah
Goldberg
One of the most comfort-
ing talking points in politics
is to claim that your politi-
cal opponents are irrationally
obsessed. Iʼm sure this is as
old as time, but I first noticed
it in the late 1990s. Many of
Bill Clintonʼs most ardent
supporters responded to
every new criticism by claim-
ing the presidentʼs enemies
were twisted by hate for the
man. During the George W.
Bush administration, thanks
in part to a phrase coined
by my late friend Charles
Krauthammer, conservatives
deflected criticism of the
president by claiming his foes
suffered from “Bush derange-
ment syndrome.”
The term caught on, and
Obama supporters hurled
charges of “Obama derange-
ment syndrome” (along
with charges of “racism”—
a secular term for a kind of
derangement) at Obamaʼs
opposition. Today, itʼs not
hard to find people claiming
that Donald Trumpʼs adver-
saries are obsessed, deranged,
or conspiracy-obsessed witch
hunters. A search of Twitter
finds an infinitely long stream
of references to “Trump
derangement syndrome.”
Now, hereʼs the thing:
Sometimes itʼs true. Clinton,
Bush, Obama and Trump all
had—and have—their hat-
ers. And some people do lose
their bearings and immedi-
ately leap to the most out-
landish interpretation of the
facts (or rumors disguised as
facts). The paranoid style is
a bipartisan phenomenon in
American life.
But sometimes the people
making the “derangement
syndrome” or “hater” charge
are the ones who refuse to see
the facts, taking comfort in
the fallacy that the motives,
real or imagined, of a critic
automatically disqualify the
criticism.
As Emory University
political scientists Alan
Abramowitz and Steven
Webster have documented,
we live in a moment of
extreme negative partisan-
ship: Millions of Americans
are driven more by the dis-
like of the other party than by
attachment to their own.
In this kind of climate,
being hated by the right
people is the best way to get
not just a big following but
an intensely loyal one. Iʼve
written about this before, but
I think itʼs worth revisiting
in the context of Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the “it girl”
(sorry, “it person”) of the left
these days.
AOC, as many call her, is
attractive, young, Hispanic
and almost eloquent in her
passion for some ill-defined
notion of socialism or social
democracy. She also says
many untrue and silly things.
Just this week she suggested
in a tweet that the Pentagon
misplaced some $21 trillion
in funding that could have
paid for most of a $32 trillion
“Medicare for All” scheme. A
Defense Department spokes-
man told the Washington
Postʼs Fact Checker column:
“DoD hasnʼt received $21
trillion in (nominal) appro-
priated funding across the
entirety of American history.”
In recent months, she
said unemployment was low
because so many people are
working two jobs (thatʼs
not how it works), that the
“upper-middle class doesnʼt
exist anymore” (it does), and
that weʼd save money on
funeral expenses if we had
“Medicare for All.”
If you point out the absur-
dity of these things, the
almost instantaneous defense
is that her critics are obsessed
with an incoming-freshman
congresswoman. In some
cases, theyʼre right. The
fixation some conservatives
have with her clothes is over
the top (though I did love
one wagʼs phrase, “Neiman
Marxist”).
But what her defenders
leave out is their own obses-
sion with the woman.
In other words, AOC
is quite brilliantly playing
a lot of people for suck-
ers. She already has more
Twitter followers than the
other 60 incoming freshman
Democrats combined.
Ocasio-Cortez, wittingly
or not, has appropriated
a technique mastered by
President Trump.
Trump prefers posi-
tive attention, but heʼll take
negative attention over no
attention every time, in part
because he knows his sup-
porters will intensify their
dedication to him in response
to allegedly unfair attacks.
AOC is doing the same thing.
By forcing partisans to take
sides, she generates contro-
versy. Controversy attracts
media attention. Media atten-
tion generates even more
controversy. And so on.
I suspect this will be the
new model for years to come.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.