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About Keizertimes. (Salem, Or.) 1979-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 18, 2017)
AUGUST 18, 2017, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM An eclipse brings us together Just like our ancestors over the past thousands of years, we will cast our eyes to the skies on Monday to experience a once-in-a-lifetime event: a total eclipse of the sun. Keizer and everything in a 60-mile-wide swath of land from Lincoln City to Ontario will come to a halt as the day grows darker due to the moon passing slowly between the sun and the earth. This astronomic event engages scientists and arm-chair Gaillelo’s alike. Centuries ago people believed that the eclips- ing of the sun was a sign of angered gods. As the moon continued its path out of the sun’s direct light, peo- ple celebrated: their sacrifaces and prayers pleased the gods. Modern science has proven that a solar eclipse is nothing more than the aligning of heavenly bodies. Some people may imbue the event with spiritual meaning. One thing the eclipse does is bring people to- gether. Most people in Keizer have never experienced a total eclipse before. Tens of thousands of Oregon faces will be turned to the sky and we will all marvel at the rarity. That will be in such constrast to what is happening in other parts of the country right now. It is more diffi cult to maintain anger and hatred at other people when everyone is awed by nature’s grand design. Keizer sits in west- ern Oregon. Though we are rela- tively conservative, our location in the progessive northwest infl uences how we we treat each other. It is hard to imagine people in Keizer tolerating the type of protests and rallies as occured in Charlotteville, Va. last weekend. We think that residents of Keizer would rise up, non-violently. to blunt any rally expousing racism and intolerance. Keizer is a tolerant place. The city council has been asked to pass an inclusivity resolution that would put the city squarely on the side of equality. As the city grows it will become more diverse which is a great opportunity to show how open and accepting the city and its residents are. Keizer can show how tolerant it is beginning this weekend with the expected throngs of visitors com- ing to see the eclipse. Depending on the source, we can see up to half a million people come to Marion County. We will all have to be pa- tient with the extra traffi c, longer waits at restaurants and other busi- nesses. An eclipse may be a rare thing but Keizerites treating others with respect and diginty should not be. —LAZ our opinion End the denial about Trump By E.J. DIONNE JR. It should not have taken the death and injury of innocents to move our nation toward moral clarity. It should not have taken President Trump’s disgraceful re- fusal to condemn white supremacy, bigotry and Nazism to make clear to all who he is and which dark impulses he is will- ing to exploit to maintain his hold on power. Those of us who are white regular- ly insist that the racists and bigots are a minority of us and that the white- power movement is a marginal and demented faction. This is true, and the mayhem in Charlottesville, Virginia, called forth passionate condemnations of blood- and-soil nationalism across the spec- trum of ideology. These forms of wit- ness were a necessary defense of the American idea and underscored the shamefulness of Trump’s embrace of moral equivalence. There are not, as Trump insisted Saturday, “many sides” to questions that were settled long ago: Racism, anti-Semitism, discrimi- nation and white supremacy are un- equivocally wrong. A president who cannot bring himself to say this immediately and unequivocally squanders any claim to moral leadership. Advisers to the president tried to clean up after this moral failure, put- ting out a statement Sunday morning —attributed to no one—declaring that “of course” his condemnation of violence “includes white suprema- cists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extrem- ist groups.” But if that “of course” is sincere, why didn’t Trump say these things in the fi rst place? And why hang on to the president’s inexcus- able moral equivalence by adding that phrase “and all extremist groups”? This was simply a weak philosophi- cal cover-up for a politician who has shown us his real instincts throughout his public life, from his birtherism to his reluctance to turn away 2016 en- dorsements from Klansmen and other racists. More Republicans than usual broke with Trump after his anemic response, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R- Utah, was especially poignant in of- fering historical perspective on this episode: “My brother didn’t give his life fi ghting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.” But that so many others in the par- ty preferred to keep their discomfort on background was itself a scandal. “I can’t tell you how sick & tired I am of the ‘privately wincing’ Republicans,” Peter Wehner, a veteran of two Re- publican administrations, tweeted. “It’s a self-incriminating silence.” Yes, it is. The proper response is for Democrats and Repub- licans willing to take a stand to force a vote in Congress condemning the president for his opportunistic obtuse- ness and making clear where the vast majority of Ameri- cans stand on white supremacy. This is important for many reasons, but espe- cially to send a message to America’s minorities that whites are willing to do more than offer rote condemna- tions of racism. For make no mistake: No matter how accurate it is to say that neo-Nazis and Klansmen represent a repugnant fringe, the fact that our president has consistently and successfully exploited white racial resentment cannot help but be taken by citizens of color as a sign of racism’s stubborn durability. The backlash to racial progress is an old American story, from the end of Reconstruction forward. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words from 1967 speak to us still: “Loose and easy language about equality, resonant res- olutions about brotherhood fall pleas- antly on the ear, but for the Negro, there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance the white popu- lation promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever- present tendency to backlash.” This is what we saw this weekend. The battles over Confederate monuments, in Charlottesville and elsewhere, refl ect our diffi culty in acknowledging that these memorials are less historical markers than po- litical statements. Many were erected explicitly in support of Jim Crow and implicitly to deny the truth that the Southern cause in the Civil War was built around a defense of slavery. Tak- ing them down is an acknowledge- ment of what history teaches, not an eradication of the past. But history is also being made now. As is always true with Trump, self-in- terest is the most effi cient explanation for his actions: Under pressure from the Russia investigation, he is reluc- tant to alienate backlash voters, who are among his most loyal supporters. The rest of us, however, have a larger obligation to our country and to racial justice. As the late civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer might sug- gest, it is time to ask about Trump: When will we become sick and tired of being sick and tired? other views (Washington Post Writers Group) Keizertimes Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303 phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com Lyndon A. Zaitz, Editor & Publisher POSTMASTER Send address changes to: SUBSCRIPTIONS One year: $25 in Marion County, $33 outside Marion County, $45 outside Oregon PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY Publication No: USPS 679-430 Keizertimes Circulation 142 Chemawa Road N. Keizer, OR 97303 Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon Cleanse the world away with a tree By DON VOWELL Forest Bathing is a thing. I heard about it on National Public Radio. A guide—certifi ed and trained—leads a group into a forest or similar natu- ral environment and instructs them in ways to better immerse themselves in the beauty and peace of nature: touch the bark, sniff the leaves, hear the birds. I was surprised to learn that drinking in na- ture’s serenity requires a sippy cup to start. In one of those stud- ies that make you scratch your head at the meth- odology it was estimated that stress alone in 2015 added $190 billion to American health care costs. Some studies in Japan show that a sig- nifi cant time in a forest environment can lower blood pressure and reduce production of stress hormones. It is believed that compounds released from trees called phytoncides may be responsible for these good effects. A possible problem is that while a walk in the forest is verifi ably bet- ter for you than the same walk in the city, the duration of the compared walks was four hours. This is not a shower, it’s a long soak. One probable cause of stress is that very few Ameri- cans have four hours they can give up to walking in the forest. Many Americans that can get away for a four-hour walk don’t have a forest convenient to them. The NPR story featured a Forest Bathing class on Theodore Roosevelt Island on the Potomac River. In the heart of Washington DC, this restored natu- ral environment is a quiet retreat for stressed out locals. Except, of course, the quiet is sometimes interrupted by its location in the approach path of the Ronald Reagan Na- tional Airport. During the audio portion of this story the forest guide sometimes had to shout instructions for enjoying the pastoral quality over the thunder of passing jetliners. I might be a pioneer in Refuge Bathing. The reason we need regu- lar bathing is that national discourse about current events in our country is highly toxic and totally dispirit- ing—stressful. I am able to fl ush this sludge from my head and my heart by a slow and lonesome visit to any of several local wildlife refuges. I am sometimes asked how I got a picture of this bird or that critter. The single answer is time spent where they live a box of soap instead of where I live. Much could be learned by watch- ing how everybody gets along at a refuge. There is little evidence of big- otry, avarice, pride, or arrogance. No liberal-conservative name-calling. No religious animosity. Herons and deer are not threatening one another with nuclear annihilation. All parties mainly seem concerned with provid- ing for their families, too busy to re- sent other families or other species. When I stop and watch all this I real- ize they are smart and I am less so. So if you are having health prob- lems—high blood pressure and stress related complaints—go stroll around at one of the local refuges. You won’t need a guide, just shut up and listen. Watch. Breathe. I realize this is not a treatment eas- ily available to all so I am develop- ing one of those little green felt trees that hangs from your car mirror. In this case it will be infused with ac- tual phytoncides and will give you the benefi ts of a forest walk in the comfort of your climate controlled car. The accompanying CD will play forest noises. After years of failure I fi nally have an idea that can make me rich. (Don Vowell lives in Keizer. He gets on his soapbox regularly in the Keizertimes.) Take the business out of health care Among some of us Americans there’s the opinion that only those who can hold a job where health insurance is provided through their workplace, and have thereby “earned it,” should have health in- surance. These folks ap- parently are unaware of the consequential out- rage should the Afford- able Care Act (ACA) be ultimately repealed with immediate pre- mium price increases 20 percent and higher ex- pected. One consideration that brings sadness in addition to the extreme social unsettling that would result from the ACA’s demise is the at- titude of uncaring that delivers the message, “I’ve got mine and care not what happens to you.” Mean- while, relative to health insurance in America, some of those who harbor contempt for their fellow citizens most likely don’t realize that their own “great” health plan could sour considerably by taking all of us back to pre-ACA with regular health insurance owners paying for the emergency room care of millions of Americans without health insurance. Look to Medicare as a model that’s much more effi cient than any for-profi t health insur- ance because it provides a means by which the middleman position of our American health in- surance companies is eliminated and thereby does not profi t from the fact that virtually all of us need medical attention to one degree or another throughout our lives. We are all Americans, “created equal,” and should not by any intervention of our fellow humans be denied it because we were not fortunate enough to be employed in a place providing health insurance or fi nancially sol- vent at the American version of the game of life. A relevant remembrance of my youth of several de- cades ago was an America where medical science was not nearly as advanced as now and where many American families took care of the sick and elderly in their own homes. Amer- ica has changed so that that condition no longer prevails. Nev- ertheless, there are ways we can continue to be sympathetic and be- nevolent by collectively, through our national wealth, look after the sick and aged by a dramatic reform in health coverage and availability. I was reminded the other day of Michael Moore’s 2007 documenta- ry, Sicko. The fi lm was made before the ACA but is a salient reminder of how national health care works for the people of Canada, Cuba, France, guest column the United Kingdom and others as- piring to embrace a caring-for-oth- ers national life culture. Other, even much less wealthy nations than ours, have it and it works very well for them while the only real complain- ers about it are profi t-making health insurance companies here who want only to make profi ts at the expense of so many Americans who can just barely afford it. Of course, such a big change as national health care would upset the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical companies. Had we the members of Congress whose campaigns were supported by the public purse—and thereby could ignore the thousands upon thou- sands of insurance and medical lob- byists and their bags of money—the change could be made and Ameri- can lives would be more important than money-making. The bottom line that makes most sense is the line that brings us to a health care system that serves all of us rather than only the lucky ones. (Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)
