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-
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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