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)
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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.)