2
Wednesday, January 6, 2021 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I
N I
O
N
A crisis of legitimacy
By Jim Cornelius
Editor in Chief
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s name, address and
phone number. Letters 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 Unpublished items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 10 a.m. Monday.
To the Editor:
My father served in both World War II
and in the Korean War as a Japanese linguist/
Naval intelligence officer. My father-in-law
served as a soldier in combat in the Korean
War. My brother served two tours as a Seabee
in combat zones during the Vietnam War.
My husband and I spent eight months in
the former Soviet Union as Foreign Service
Staff Officers countering Soviet anti-Amer-
ican propaganda on a U.S. Government
exhibit. After the Soviet Union fell, and while
I was working as corporate counsel at U.S.
Bank, I spent many hours volunteering for
the American Bar Association9s Central and
East European Law Initiative, assisting the
newly independent countries of the former
Soviet bloc adapt their legal systems to the
norms of democracy and the rule of law. My
older son is a licensed EMT. My younger son
was awarded several medals for his service
as a civilian in the Pentagon during both the
Obama and Trump Administrations. We have
all served our country in different ways.
As should be apparent from the forego-
ing, for letter writer Chet Davis to accuse
See LETTERS on page 6
Sisters Weather Forecast
Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Showers
Mostly Cloudy
Rain/Snow Showers
Partly Cloudy
48/29
44/31
41/26
40/28
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Rain/Snow
Rain/Snow
Showers
41/31
42/33
46/35
The Nugget Newspaper, LLC
Website: www.nuggetnews.com
442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759
Tel: 541-549-9941 | Email: 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
Creative Director: Jess Draper
Community Marketing
Partner: Vicki Curlett
Classifieds & Circulation: Lisa May
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, $55; six months (or less), $30. First-class postage: one year, $95; six months, $65.
Published Weekly. ©2021 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is pro-
hibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget
Newspaper, LLC. 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 unconditionally 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.
Over the holidays, the
House of Cornelius rode
down a side trail into the
Wars of the Roses.
The Wars of the Roses
were a series of civil wars
that ripped England apart for
30 years from 1455 to 1485.
The complexity of three-
decades of instability, tur-
moil and extreme violence
has been over-simplified into
a dynastic struggle between
the Houses of Lancaster and
York, the Red Rose vs. the
White. The struggle has been
fodder for dramatists from
Shakespeare to Philippa
Gregory9s <The White
Queen,= and George R.R.
Martin plundered its rich,
bloodshot vein in the fan-
tasy epic that became HBO9s
wildly popular <Game of
Thrones.=
For all its inherent drama,
perhaps the most compelling
aspect of the period is its res-
onance. Historian Dan Jones,
who wrote an excellent
single-volume history titled
<The Wars of the Roses: The
Fall of the Plantagenets and
the Rise of the Tudors,= pre-
fers the term <resonance= to
the often-glib assertion of
historical <relevance.=
Seeking on-the-nose, one-
to-one correlations between
past and present events can
easily mislead. But resonance
is a different matter 4 it gets
at the continuity of human
behavior, the noble and the
sordid. It allows us to see
ourselves in the people of the
past 4 and to see them in us.
What tore England asun-
der in a welter of blood was
a crisis of legitimacy. King
Henry VI 4 who inherited
the Crown as a young child
4 fell very far indeed from
the mighty tree that was his
father, Henry V. He was
weak, vacillating, and prob-
ably seriously mentally ill.
He was the legitimate king,
but he wasn9t up to the job.
A sincere effort to do right
by the realm on the part of
his Queen, the remarkable
Margaret of Anjou, was con-
tested by the most powerful
noble in England, Richard,
Duke of York 4 who con-
sidered himself, not without
reason, to be a superior can-
didate for Lord Protector.
The question of who would
guide England through crisis
dissolved into a brutal and
intractable conflict.
For decades, no one
could establish full, uncon-
tested legitimacy as King of
England 3 and the realm bled.
The
American
Constitution was designed
to make national institutions
much more important than
the people who hold office.
American presidents are not
supposed to be monarchs.
American citizens are not
supposed to rally to the per-
sonal banners of overlords.
But over the 232-year
history of the presidency,
the chief executive has been
allowed to grow more and
more powerful, to the point
at which recent presidents
(of both parties) brag about
their ability to rule by decree,
through what they benignly
call <executive orders.=
And when you have a
monarchical presidency,
a crisis of legitimacy has
explosive potential.
For the past two decades,
since the excruciatingly close
2000 Bush vs. Gore election,
it has become common prac-
tice to challenge the legiti-
macy of the person who sits
behind the Resolute Desk.
Even when he won by wide
margins in 2008 and 2012,
some of President Barack
Obama9s opponents falsely
claimed that his presidency
was illegitimate because
he wasn9t born in the U.S.
In fact, <birtherism= was
Donald Trump9s entre
into the national political
limelight.
In 2016, many Demo-
crats, appalled by Trump9s
unexpected victory, loudly
cried that he was <not their
president= 4 though he
clearly won the election 4
and, proclaiming <The Resis-
tance,= assiduously sought
his removal from office
through investigation and
impeachment.
Now we are witnessing
the unprecedented spectacle
of a sitting president under-
mining the legitimacy of the
very institutions he is sup-
posed to represent, claiming
against all evidence that he
remains the rightful leader of
the nation, and sowing what,
for millions of Americans,
will be an ardent belief that
the new president is not
legitimate.
A president urging a state
official to <find= votes and
to <recalculate= an election
outcome should alarm any
citizen, whatever their politi-
cal persuasion. Republican
Senator Ben Sasse has
rightly called President
Trump9s post-election behav-
ior <(pointing) a loaded gun
at the heart of legitimate
self-government.=
Events of recent weeks
have expanded the Overton
Window of what can be
accepted in American
politics.
In his history of the Wars
of the Roses, Jones notes
that, <Richard III9s usurpa-
tion of the Crown had broken
every rule of political propri-
ety, and with it, opened new
and previously unthinkable
possibilities.=
The resonance of his-
tory whispers that, when the
unthinkable becomes pos-
sible, the land is in grave
danger.