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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 13, 2021)
Opinion 4A Saturday, February 13, 2021 Thinking Out Loud Indian traffi c and American ideologues ears ago, as one of my friends was fi nishing up a semester of study in Delhi, we decided to spend a month traveling in India together. Although I haven’t traveled a lot, it’s clear that experiencing other places and cultures gives you a different view of your own. Comparing the life you know with other worlds makes you identify what you love about ANNE your own MORRISON country, and LA GRANDE think about the things we could do differently or better. One of the things I remember about India is the traffi c. To venture into traffi c was to venture into a world of chaos. Each day started with the sounds of distant car horns, followed by others, until the din of automobile horns was deafening, every- where. Roads didn’t necessarily seem to have lanes; instead, drivers snaked their way forward wherever an opening appeared. Traffi c was not limited to auto- mobiles —instead, the massive, crawling entourages included scooters, bicycle rickshaws, elephants, col- orfully painted trucks with groups of people riding on top, camels, entire families on a single motor- cycle, live pigs being transported on mopeds, bicy- clists carrying loads the size of a small house. Even in the cities, monkeys scampered across the tops of slow-going vehicles. People walked freely in the traffi c, begging or selling food or merchandise. While the traffi c generally moved in a single direc- tion, there would always be someone attempting to go the opposite way, like a salmon swimming upstream. It was amazing. It was amazing to imagine cities of millions, which seemed to have no traffi c system of any kind. It was amazing to imagine any place tolerating a traffi c system that was so erratic, uncontrolled and dangerous. India was a British colony until 1947; I would have expected India to have inherited a traffi c system with more order. I tried to imagine imposing traffi c rules on millions of people who were used to being completely unregulated, and couldn’t even imagine how it could be done. The Indian traffi c system certainly provided max- imum individual freedom. It was entertaining — you could never guess what you would see when you ventured out. It was ineffi cient — there were times when I swore I could have walked across a city more quickly. And it was dangerous. I saw two fatal acci- dents and many near-misses during my month in India. As Americans, we tend to accept traffi c regu- lations such as seat belt requirements or manda- tory auto insurance, but the traffi c chaos in India made me think about our own characteristic resis- tance to having the government impose rules or tell us what to do. We live in a country where citizens are famously independent — it’s a hallmark of being American. We — myself included — don’t appre- ciate being told what to do. We are resistant to the idea that the government can restrict our freedom. Depending on our particular point of view, the gov- ernment has no business restricting our access to or use of public lands. The government has no business implementing protections for workers (or perhaps no business implementing regulations protecting busi- ness interests at the expense of workers). The gov- ernment has no business requiring us to wear masks, or close down businesses or to restrict gatherings or our freedom to worship as we please —not even tem- porarily, not even to prevent transmission of a conta- gious and deadly virus. The government certainly has no right to impose restrictions on our gun rights. In America, we have rights — and our indi- vidual rights so deeply defi ne our national identity that many consider it un-American to even think of restricting them. But what if those individual rights confl ict with the common good of our communities? Sometimes I think that American resistance to the idea of government regulation creates a situation similar to the traffi c in India. Sometimes, I wonder whether America doesn’t have just a different kind of traffi c circus, with many of us so focused on our individual rights that — like the drivers in India — we never even stop to consider what would be best for our communities as a whole. ——— Anne Morrison is a La Grande resident and retired attorney who has lived in Union County since 2000. Thinking Out Loud is her monthly column for The Observer. Y Letters Suggestion for Oregon’s ‘dumbocrats senators’ I have a suggestion for our two dumbocrats senators. Can’t you waste our tax dollars enough with a phony impeachment? Now you come to red country and waste our rights to use our lands the way we want. How about you just stay west of the Cas- cades in your socialist swamp? Kenneth Parsons La Grande The end of our republic as we know it? I’ve been listening to the second impeachment trial and hope everyone else has too. Trump’s words and actions during the campaign and post-election clearly paint the picture of a leader bent on overthrowing our constitutional democratic process. When, long before the election, he said the only way he could lose is through fraud, he was clearly out of touch with the way elections work. Then, after the election he said he would never concede and incited his hardcore followers to overturn the electoral process, culminating in the Capitol riot and threats on the lives of our elected offi cials, including his own vice president, Mike Pence. Finally, when he saw the carnage his words and actions caused, he failed to lift a fi nger to call them off, clearly showing his disregard for his oath of offi ce, our Constitution, the rule of law and the lives of our elected representatives. Against this, his lawyers’ defense is First Amendment rights to free speech. Ridiculous. Also that he cannot be removed from offi ce since he is already out. A technicality, espe- cially in the face of the monstrosity of the crime that was committed. I thought this second impeachment would just be another empty show of partisanship. I no longer think so. If after the damning evidence presented in this trial Trump is acquitted on a party-line vote, I believe it will signal the end of respect for democracy in the Republican Party and possibly the end of the republic as we know it. Dave Felley La Grande If opposing views are censored there won’t be any unity The media has always infl u- enced public opinion and controlled what most people know about cur- Write to us The Observer welcomes letters to the editor. Letters are limited to 350 words and must be signed and carry the author’s address and phone number (for verifi cation purposes only). Email your letters to news@lagrandeobserver. com or mail them to the address below. rent events, but over the last four plus years that infl uence has grown expo- nentially. The media, including social media and big tech, in my opinion, are more biased than they have ever been. They have essentially become the pro- paganda arm of the Democrat Party, the Washington establishment and the left. What now passes for news is fi lled with opinion, misinformation, disinformation, fabrication, distortion, character assassination, omission and censoring. What is now our “news” is pre- sented from the perspective of the left. Anyone with a different view is sus- pect and labeled, vilifi ed, condemned or ignored. This is obvious to people with a more conservative view of the world but apparently not even seen by those on the left. We have had several years of the media and the left tearing this country apart by segregating everyone into groups and telling us that they are the only ones that can fi x the problems they created, all the while blaming those problems on others. They con- stantly blame others for the very things they themselves are doing. The media has essentially col- luded with the establishment in gov- ernment to do whatever it takes to help them keep their power. They couldn’t stand a man who actually thought Americans should come fi rst. Who thought the government placed a burden on most people’s lives with overregulation and punitive controls. Who thought people should be free to create their own destiny and be free to have their own thoughts even if they differed from others. The media’s goal for more than four years has been to destroy him and anyone who supports him. It is going to be really hard to unite the country if half of the country is disenfranchised by the media and told their opinions don’t matter. If opposing views are censored there won’t be any unity. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for the left to change their ways and acknowledge they aren’t always right, no matter how many times they tell us they are. Mark Barber La Grande The left’s hatred must not go unchallenged I take extreme offense to Anne Morrison’s column The Observer published Jan. 16, 2021. Having known people who were in concen- tration camps in Germany, to try to compare those who don’t agree with you with that most terrible history is irresponsible. I consider myself a patriot, respecting our fl ag, the laws that keep us safe, not picking only those with which I agree, condemning violence, burning and looting, taking over parts of cities with vio- lence, allowing violent groups to attack federal buildings as we have seen much too often recently, those arrested only to be set free again. The violent actions of Antifa and BLM should be condemned. You are pleased to say the “Trump rioters” but do not seem to condemn the violence we have experienced in Portland, Seattle, California, even though inno- cent lives were lost and businesses burned. Do we have two standards to be applied? The left would rather vilify patriots and glorify the left extremists. Does the end really jus- tify the means? We have witnessed for the past four years the hatred of our presi- dent and the disrespect for the offi ce by the Democratic Party. There was the “resist” movement, bloody head of the president on a platter, his family being vilifi ed and threat- ened, violence and disregard for the voice of the American people, some being gleeful but with the sad- ness of many. This hatred began the day President Trump took offi ce. You can be sure damage has been done and with the rest of the world watching. After four years with constant hatred and ridicule for our presi- dent, we are now being asked to work together as another impeach- ment is being tried. I for one am tired of allowing people with so much hatred to go unchallenged. Edward Ater La Grande