Wednesday, August 28, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Find something you
love to do, and you’ll
never have to work
a day in your life.
— Harvey Mackay
Jonah
Goldberg
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Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer¾s 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 those of you who live in our great
community,
Recently there has been a lot of talk about
the amount of crime and/or vandalism in our
town. Unfortunately the tone is one that sug-
gests that Sisters has changed. Well of course
communities do change as they grow, and we
certainly have been growing.
I9d like to share a recent personal experi-
ence. My wife and I own a long-time business
here in Sisters, and on a recent Saturday night
when we closed up we inadvertently neglected
to lock the front door. We are closed on Sunday
but a customer came to our door unaware that
we were not open. When she opened the door
she saw the lights out and quickly realized we
were closed. She then looked around for some
way to let us know our door was not locked.
There was a flyer posted on the front door for
an upcoming event in the store. There was a
phone number for the person putting on the
event on the flyer. She called that number
and left a message that our door was open.
The person she called was on the pass and did
not receive the message till she got closer to
Sisters.
The person who received the message
went to the store and tried to find a home
phone number for me. She found a number
but when she called I did not have my phone
so it went to voicemail. At that time another
customer showed up who knows me and real-
ized what was going on. He helped her find a
key to the door here in the store and the two
of them locked the front door. Then he also
called me and left a message. Later that after-
noon I checked my messages and saw what
was going on. I went to the store and found
See LETTERS on page 16
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Last week there was a
sharp uptick in speculation
that President Trump is a few
fries shy of a Happy Meal.
Whether it was his tweet
declaring that American
companies <are hereby
ordered to immediately start
looking for an alternative=
to doing business in China,
or his decision to cancel a
trip to Denmark because the
Danish prime minister didn9t
have a <nice= reaction to his
desire to buy Greenland, or
his suggestion that Federal
Reserve Chairman Jerome
Powell might be a greater
enemy than China9s premier-
for-life, it did seem as if the
West Wing9s nurse might
have accidentally switched
Trump9s meds for M&Ms.
<This is not normal.
And I don9t mean that as in,
»Trump is violating the shib-
boleths of the Washington
establishment,9= wrote the
Washington Post9s Megan
McArdle. <I mean that as
in, »This is not normal for a
functioning adult.9=
CNN media correspon-
dent Brian Stelter said over
the weekend: <He9s getting
worse. We can see it. It9s
happening in public but it9s
still a very hard, very sensi-
tive story to cover. I9m talk-
ing of course about President
Trump, about his behavior,
about his instability.=
I9ve long thought that
Trump was a perfect illustra-
tion of the old observation
that rich people are never
crazy; they9re just <eccen-
tric.= But I am skeptical that
the president9s mental state
has gotten worse.
Instead, his situation is
getting more precarious
and that is making Trump9s
Trumpiness more obvious.
Specifically, I think the fiz-
zle of the Mueller probe was
a grievous blow to the presi-
dent, for the simple reason
that it removed an extremely
useful political and psycho-
logical bogeyman.
Robert Mueller9s inves-
tigation allowed Trump to
give voice to his persecu-
tion complex. In his mind,
at least, the <witch hunt=
was an all-purpose excuse
to whine about <fake news=
and distract from other con-
troversies. But it also served
the same function for much
of the right-wing media,
giving them a ratings-and-
clicks-rich topic to focus on.
In a sense, Mueller was a
substitute for Hillary Clinton.
Trump9s 2016 opponent was
such a reviled figure on the
right, she gave many Trump-
skeptical voters the excuse
they needed to overlook his
shortcomings. After the elec-
tion, Mueller and his <angry
Dems= of the Deep State
served as a serviceable alter-
native to imposing cohesion
and message discipline on
the right.
With Mueller gone,
Trump is left scrambling
to find a replacement. The
<squad= 4 the four left-
wing Democratic first-term
congresswomen 4 are, col-
lectively and individually,
candidates. And they cer-
tainly have their political
uses, given their radicalism,
hostility to Israel, etc. His
base is happy to go all-in
against them. But attacking
four women of color has its
limits as a political strat-
egy, especially given that
Trump9s electoral Achilles9
heel is suburban moderate
women.
Also, they pose no serious
threat to Trump9s presidency
the way Mueller seemed to,
so they do not focus Trump9s
mind the way the special
prosecutor did.
Right now, the lead-
ing candidate for Trump9s
Mueller replacement is
Powell. And that dog won9t
hunt. Trump is clearly con-
vinced that the Fed chair is
trying to destroy his re-elec-
tion chances by not lowering
interest rates to goose the
economy past the 2020 fin-
ish line. Some will think this
is bat-guano bonkers, oth-
ers won9t, but the political
reality is that this storyline
is just too complicated to
replace the Mueller narra-
tive. It doesn9t attract allies
the same way, and the talk-
ing points required to sustain
it are just too convoluted.
Whether or not he9s a
stable genius, the Trump on
display now is the same one
we9ve always seen. What9s
changed are the circum-
stances. Like an unsteady
man long held upright by
pushing on a locked door,
he9s tumbling now that the
path is suddenly open. He
needs some new enemy to
brace against, and he9s flail-
ing around in search of one.
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Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.