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Wednesday, August 7, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Domestic terrorism
By Jim Cornelius
Editor in Chief
<&mania
feeds
upon itself and becomes
hysterical.=
4 Christopher Hitchens
It’s time
for the
24th Annual
Country Fair
& Art Show!
Sat., Aug. 10, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
68825 Brooks Camp Rd., Sisters
PHOTO BY JERRY BALDOCK
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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:
I sat through the town hall meeting on
Monday held by Sen. Bentz and Rep. Bonham
on HB 2020. First let me say it was good to
see that people of different opinions can still
be civil 3 unlike what we have seen from other
town halls, in other cities. Kudos to Sisters
Country people!
We should all be thankful that our elected
representatives have clearly studied the subject
of cap and trade, and are well versed on the
topic. Their level of knowledge was impres-
sive, and their concern about doing something
(the right thing) was evident.
My suggestion is that we contact Speaker
Kotek and Governor Brown and remind them
of how history views major legislation that is
rammed thru on party lines. LBJ knew he had
to have bi-partisan support for Medicare for
it to become a fixture in our society. Sadly,
President Obama failed to learn that lesson
and instead of passing bi-partisan healthcare
reform, he rammed thru Obamacare on a party
line vote and it is slowly being dismantled.
Cap and Trade can work if done properly,
and if it is done on a bi-partisan basis. This is
an important step for Oregonians, and we will
all be better off if we do it together.
Carey Tosello
s
s
s
To the Editor:
Monday, July 29, there was a Town Hall
called by our State Representative D. Bonham
See LETTERS on page 24
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Anyone who attends a
music festival in Sisters, or
goes shopping in a big-box
store in Bend, or maybe
goes out for an evening
downtown might pause in
the wake of the past week9s
events and consider that
they might just be a target.
Active shooters attacked
crowds at a festival in
Gilroy, California; shoppers
in a Wal-Mart in El Paso,
Texas; and downtown din-
ers in Dayton, Ohio. It can
happen anywhere, and any-
one could be a target.
That9s terrorism.
The El Paso shooter
appears to have been ideo-
logically driven by hatred
of immigrants. The motiva-
tions of the other two are
murkier. The Gilroy shooter
may or may not have been
driven by white supremacist
ideology, but he reportedly
imbibed the same spew of
late-19th-century racialist
bile that fueled fascism and
National Socialism. He told
a witness that he was <really
angry.= The Dayton shooter
reportedly kept a <rape list=
and a <kill list= when he was
in high school, and seems to
have had extreme left lean-
ings. Among the first he
killed was his own sister.
Ideology matters, but it
is not a sufficient explana-
tion for why mass shootings
keep happening. Any mech-
anistic explanation 4 it9s
guns; it9s video games; it9s
mental illness; it9s racism;
it9s&. is bound to be reduc-
tive and inadequate. History
shows us that.
The U.S. has experi-
enced bouts of domestic ter-
rorism before.
Legal analyst Jeffrey
Toobin bids us:
<Think about one fact,
one fact alone: 1,000 politi-
cal bombings a year in 972,
973, 974. Almost inconceiv-
able. That was what the
world was like. Skyjackings
were epidemic. You had an
actual revolutionary move-
ment in this country that,
while never likely to suc-
ceed, was disrupting the
country, especially Northern
California, in a way that9s&
it9s just hard to believe.=
Those bombings, it must
be noted, were for the most
part low- or no-casualty
affairs, but there were other
acts of intense criminal vio-
lence purportedly support-
ing leftist <revolution.=
In the 1980s and 990s,
there was a spate of right-
wing terrorism, culminat-
ing in the horrific bomb-
ing of the Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City
in 1995, an attack that took
168 lives.
Explaining such acts
as the products of warped
ideology 4 or the belief
that such mad acts must
require a mad perpetrator
4 obscure a simple, hor-
rifying truth: Some people
just want to watch the world
burn. Some people want
to set it on fire. The end
doesn9t justify the means 4
the means ARE the end. It9s
all about the blaze of glory.
And, as the philosopher Eric
Hoffer wrote in his brilliant
treatise <The True Believer:
Thoughts on the Nature of
Mass Movements=:
<Glory is largely a the-
atrical concept. There is no
striving for glory without a
vivid awareness of an audi-
ence& The desire to escape
or camouflage their unsat-
isfactory selves develops in
the frustrated a facility for
pretending 4 for making
a show 4 and also a readi-
ness to identify themselves
wholly with an imposing
spectacle.=
The spectacle itself
drives these events. It9s no
accident that they cluster;
each terrible act feeds the
next. The Internet is full of
fever swamps where per-
petrators of mass shootings
are fetishized and glorified
as heroes. As Hitchens says,
<mania feeds upon itself and
becomes hysterical.=
That9s not mental illness;
that9s evil.
We have gone a long
way down a dark path,
with no easy fix to get us
out. Tinkering with sys-
tems won9t avail us much.
As Patrick J. Deneen writes
with a nod to Czech dis-
sident Vaclav Havel, a bet-
ter system won9t ensure us
a better life 4 in fact, only
creating a better life can
build a better system. That,
Deneen says, requires <the
patient encouragement of
new forms of community
that can serve as havens in
our depersonalized political
and economic order.=
And a sense of honor and
code wouldn9t hurt.