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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 2020)
2 Wednesday, January 1, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Jonah Goldberg Happ y New Year! From The Nugget Newspaper staff Friday Night Lights... PHOTO BY JEFF OMODT Sisters’ skyline has been spectacular in recent days. Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Showers Snow to rain Showers Rain/snow Partly cloudy Partly cloudy 44/33 44/39 48/31 40/25 38/26 39/27 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Graphic Design: Jess Draper & Lisa May Community Marketing Partners: Vicki Curlett & Patti Jo Beal Classifieds & Circulation: Kema Clark Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2020 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper9s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. There is a strong case to be made that things are get- ting better. In 2010, Matt Ridley made the case in <The Rational Optimist= that things were better than they appeared. Writing in The Spectator, on the cusp of 2020, Ridley offers an update: We9re finishing the best decade in human history. But it sure doesn9t feel like it, does it? In the politi- cal realm, we9re all angry at one another, convinced some terrible <they= is win- ning at <our= expense. As we end the decade, our poli- tics are wildly out of sync with the technological, eco- nomic and medical events of the last 10 years. Why the mismatch? Economic and politi- cal dislocations caused by technological progress have been a source of unease and resentment ever since the printing press sparked the Protestant Reformation. But the pace of today9s changes sometimes feels like more than humans were meant to process and adjust to. The decline of organized religion is a perennial scape- goat, particularly on the right. And although it surely is an important part of the story, we have a tendency to gloss over the fact that reli- gion hasn9t always been a source of social peace. These and other trends are part of the broader fail- ure of our institutions 4 political, cultural and famil- ial 4 to give people a sense of meaning and belonging. People want to be part of something larger than them- selves, and when they can9t find that close to home, they look to politics and ideology to provide a sense of iden- tity they can9t find where they live. Another source of national grumpiness is the plight of young people. Saddled with debt and lack- ing a clear flight path to the middle class, the young are increasingly skeptical of capitalism. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests we9ve been raising our children to be more fragile and less tolerant of ideas they don9t like or find threatening. I think he9s right, but that9s clearly not the whole of the problem (as Haidt would readily con- cede). Also, more impor- tantly, the angriest and most divisive people today aren9t youngsters but oldsters. This points to the prob- lem today9s political leaders are most reluctant to dis- cuss: us. Oh, sure, plenty of politicians will blame vot- ers for our troubles, but the voters they single out are the voters who vote for the other party. TV pundits will blame the viewers 4 of the other cable network, not the ones who tune into them. Writers will heap scorn on readers who read the wrong writers. We live in a culture that finds political power in claims of powerlessness and cultural strength in victim- hood. The right thinks this is all true about the left and vice versa. But don9t you dare tell anybody that their side is full of whiners, too. Bad followership yields bad leadership, because in a market-based democracy the customer is always right. So we have one <change= election after another, driven by voters who don9t really know what they want beyond <not this.= Nearly every politician wants to claim to be a rebel taking on the system on behalf of the righteous vic- tims who voted them into office; few want to take responsibility for the system itself. Congress is brimming with pols who are great at messaging outrage but don9t know jack about governing. Senators rail about elites as if being a senator doesn9t make you one. Presidential candidates 4 including the incumbent 4insist there are easy solutions to everything, but <they= are blocking the way. Everyone wants to be an outsider, leaving our institu- tions without insiders will- ing to do the necessary work of leadership, which begins with telling people what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear. © 2019 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.