NOVEMBER 17, 2017, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
A glorious holiday for every home
Does anyone need to be remind-
ed that next week is Thanksgiving?
Television is fi lled with soft-focus ads
showing families enjoying preparing
and eating the holiday dinner.
This weekend every store that sells
groceries will be packed with shoppers
picking the fi xings for dinner. Many
of us will step back and marvel at the
sight of the table with its themed-
holiday centerpieces, the
‘good’ china and cloth
napkins.
After dinner many will
either be cleaning up, suf-
fering a food coma or
watching a football game.
Some, though fewer of us,
will be preparing for the frenzy of the
Black Friday sales at stores and malls
throughout the region.
Roll back the tape of that Norman
Rockwell-esque scene and start over
at a Keizer household where abun-
dance is rarely seen and the reasons to
give thanks seem to belong to some-
one else. In a rich nation there are too
many families who can’t take part in
the great American pageant of our
Thanksgiving rituals. The lucky fami-
lies are able to get to the food bank
for generous donations of food. The
unlucky families treat Thanksgiving as
just another Thursday.
We ask that as Keizer families shop
for their Thanksgiving dinner, they
add extra items to their basket that can
be donated to help every family enjoy
the holiday.
Every store has a bin for
food donations that will be
donated to Marion-Polk
Food Share or Keizer Com-
munity Food Bank. When we
have plenty it should not be a
heavy lift to help our neigh-
bors who may not be as fortunate as
we.
Other ways to help this season is to
volunteer at Wednesday’s community
dinner at St. Edward Church from 3
to 6 p.m. Or help out in downtown
Salem locations to feed the needy.
Thanksgiving will take on a whole
new meaning when we help our
brothers.
—LAZ
District should
pay for Newberg
ing, and subjecting them
to possibly being hit by a
car some morning. There
are also cars driving on
Newberg to drop their
kids off at the corner of
Newberg and MacAr-
thur that are making the
situation even more unsafe. Does a
child have to get hit by a car and
possibly killed before the Salem
Keizer School District stands up to
take notice of this unsafe situation?
Several people have signed a petition
and attended Salem Keizer School
District meetings, and Keizer City
Council meetings to address this is-
sue of unsafe habits caused by the
gate being left unlocked, only to be
ignored and told that the entrance
is safe. Even Chief of Police John
Teague will not send an offi cer to
the neighborhood as the traffi c con-
gestion is too obstructive. Please feel
free to sit anywhere in the vicinity
of MacArthur and Newberg and
see for yourself how unsafe this has
become. When talking with Keizer
Mayor Cathy Clark, she states that
the city is trying to get the residents
of Newberg Drive to pay for street
lights and sidewalks on Newberg.
Why should the neighborhood have
to pay for this if the school wants to
provide safety for the students to use
the MacArthur gate? Why doesn’t
the school district pay for it?
Jeff Weekly
Keizer
editorial
letters
To the Editor:
On Oct. 12, I attend-
ed a meeting at McNary
High School regarding
parking and traffi c issues
on Newberg Drive.
The meeting was hosted by Mc-
Nary Principal Erik Jespersen and
Salem Keizer Public Schools Chief
Operations Offi cer Michael Wolfe.
Each of these individuals stated that
they were concerned about the
safety of students arriving at Mc-
Nary High School, and wanted to
stress that keeping the gate open to
MacArthur Street was allowing a
safe entrance. All the individuals that
attended the meeting stated that this
is not correct, and leaving the gate
open to MacArthur is unsafe. New-
berg Drive has no sidewalks or street
lights for the safety of the students
walking to school, whereas Celtic
Way and Dice Lane both have side-
walks with street lights providing a
safer entrance for the students.
They then claimed that the stu-
dents that live on Newberg would
have to walk that much further to
get around to these streets, which is
also not true. There is only one stu-
dent that lives on Newberg Drive,
and his parents agree that the en-
trance on MacArthur is unsafe with
all the cars driving in and out of
the school parking lot. They prefer
their student walks around, and he
always has. The fact is, leaving the
gate open on MacArthur is creating
an unsafe environment to the stu-
dents that are walking in the street
on Newberg without proper light-
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Morally and intellectually exhausted
By MICHAEL GERSON
Political commentators are sup-
posed to be somewhat objective and
analytical when it comes to tracking
trends. In that spirit, I fi nd the polling
snapshot of President Trump at one
year since his election to be interest-
ing—if “interesting” is defi ned as a
downward spiral of polarization, pet-
tiness and prejudice that threatens the
daily functioning and moral standing
of the American repub-
lic.
Our times are not
normal—and it is a dis-
service to the coun-
try to normalize them.
In a recent Washington
Post-ABC News survey,
Trump’s approval rating
is worse —far worse—
than any president at this stage in seven
decades of polling. About half of those
surveyed strongly disapprove. The pub-
lic assessment of Trump’s leadership,
character and competence has grown
harsher in every category.
All this is true following two quar-
ters of more than 3 percent economic
growth, with the stock market boom-
ing and unemployment at 4.1 percent.
Practically, this means that Trump has
no cushion or margin of public sup-
port when economic circumstances
worsen.
And yet.
The Washington Post-ABC News
poll shows that if the Trump/Clinton
presidential race were re-held today, it
would be a tie. Think on that. Arguably
the worst president in modern history
might still beat one of the most promi-
nent Democrats in America. This indi-
cates a Democratic Party in the midst
of its own profound crisis. During the
Obama years, it collapsed in large por-
tions of the country. Its national estab-
lishment has been revealed—with ex-
tensive footnotes provided by Donna
Brazile—as arrogant, complacent and
corrupt. But the only serious ideologi-
cal alternative to that establishment is
frankly socialist—the fatuous and shal-
low sort of socialism held by college
freshmen and Bernie Sanders.
We have reached a moment
of intellectual and moral ex-
haustion for both major politi-
cal parties. One is dominated
by ethnic politics—which a
disturbingly strong majority
of Republican regulars have
found appealing or accept-
able. The other is dominated
by identity politics—a move-
ment that counts a growing number
of Robespierres. Both seem united
only in their resentment of the inter-
national economic order that America
has built and led for 70 years.
Normally, a political party would
succeed by taking the best of populist
passion and giving it more mainstream
expression. But in this particular, po-
larized environment, how is that pos-
sible? Do mainstream Republicans
take a dollop of nativism and a dash
of racism and add them to their tax
cuts? That seemed to be the approach
that Ed Gillespie took in the Virginia
governor’s race. But this is morally
poisonous—like taking a little ricin in
your tea. Do mainstream Democrats
just take some angry identity politics
and a serving of socialism —some ex-
treme pro-choice rhetoric and single
payer health care—and add them to
job training programs?
other
voices
The lead ideology of the Republi-
can Party at the national level is now
immoral and must be overturned—a
task that only a smattering of retir-
ing offi ceholders has undertaken. The
lead ideology of the Democratic Party
is likely to be overturned—by radicals
with little to offer the country save an-
ger and bad economics.
Where does this leave us at year one
of the Trump era? With two very sick
political parties that have a monopoly
on political power and little prospect
for reform and recovery. The stakes are
quite high. If America really develops a
political competition between ethno-
nationalism and identity socialism, it
will mean we are a nation in decline—
likely to leave pressing problems (edu-
cational failure, unconstrained debt, a
fl awed criminal justice system) uncon-
fronted. Likely to forfeit global lead-
ership, undermine world markets and
cede to others the mantle of stability
and fi rm purpose.
There is a serious prospect that the
president will truly crash and burn
in a colossal fi asco so disastrous as to
be undeniable proof against all things
Trump. But that would be so bad for
the country that it is hard to wish for.
So what should we wish for? It is a
measure of our moment that this is not
obvious. It is quite possible that mod-
erate conservatism and moderate lib-
eralism are inadequate to explain and
tame the convulsive economic and so-
cial changes of our time. Which places
America’s future —uncertain, maybe
unknowable—on the other side of an
earthquake.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
Mandatory reporting in our schools
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By GENE H. McINTYRE
The front page article, Law Profes-
sor on SKSD mandatory reporting in
last week’s Keizertimes resulted in a
“Do I laugh or do I cry?” reaction.
There were several reasons for be-
ing torn asunder, the most notable be-
ing the hypocrisy angle, what a mod-
ern day U.S. public school district will
do to curry favor with local persons
of conservative interests even though
the Salem Keizer School District is
a secular-founded public
organization.
But let’s get to the
meat of this matter. The
hypocrisy between what
so many of us Americans
say and what we do may
be unparalleled in the rest
of the world. There is in
fact so much hypocrisy in
America that one must only scratch the
surface of life here to know its depths.
For one, Americans will tell pollsters
they’re in church when they’re actually
sleeping in or watching a ball game;
similar examples could fi ll a book. Pol-
iticians don’t dare talk about legalizing
certain drugs because Americans are
reputed more likely to use drugs than
other nations where use is accurately
reported. Meanwhile, American hy-
pocrisy is possibly most bizarre when
it has to do with sex.
Facts show that Americans are
sexually active because Americans are
human beings, as is true of every oth-
er species on earth. As humans we can’t
help ourselves as sex usually strikes
like a bolt of lightening at puberty, al-
though curiosity about it gets under-
way often long before it can result in
a pregnancy. Yet, so many Americans
object to other people engaging in it
that our local school chief adminis-
trator and others there want to make
the school environment here not un-
like a religious dictatorship. So much
so that they will intrude with threat of
law enforcement into the private lives
of the most vulnerable among us, our
youth.
American prudery means that both
tabloid and actual news media are
regularly dominated by sex scandals.
These are often conducted as though
the worse thing a person of any age
can do is to have consensual sex with
someone to whom he or she is not
married. Most of what hap-
pens regarding this topic in
this country seems actually
to be controlled by middle-
aged
spinster-resembling
persons, trying to force our
youth into strict 19th cen-
tury lives.
Facts on the subject reveal
that Americans have sex on
average 2.3 times a week, while 19 out
of 20 Americans have had premarital
sex, not holding back from getting
started during the years of intense,
internal fi res burning, the teenage
years that get well underway in mid-
dle school and hugely drive the high
school years. Americans like to have
sex for pleasure as indicated by the
count of contraception devices sold
in the U.S. Another revelation from
research is that Americans love porn,
while conservatives, who denounce
other people’s sexual choices, have
themselves been discovered, when
anonymously surveyed, to be avid
consumers of porn.
Americans just love judging other
people, even when they themselves
behave in similar, if not identical ways.
Abortion clinics receive an earful of
how common the hypocrisy is when
sharing stories about anti-abortion
patients telling how they deserve an
abortion when “Those sluts in the
waiting room don’t.” Meanwhile, sta-
guest
column
tistics inform us that 99 percent have
used contraception; yet, 38 percent
of women want to take away fund-
ing from Planned Parenthood and 46
percent of men want contraception
subsidies cut while they benefi t from
their use.
A not small number of Americans
are a study in extreme hypocrisy. They
wanted and participated in reckless un-
married sex as a teenager but escaped
the peril of an enraged father seeking
justice for his pregnant daughter. Then,
they get older and purportedly “wiser”
and suddenly are rabidly against teen-
agers having sex. This attitude in view
of statistics that show that teenage sex
is not as rampant as it once was and
actually has been in free fall for the last
half century. The facts point out that
teenagers in the 1950s, for example,
were a whole lot less chaste. Yet, no
matter the prohibitions and denuncia-
tions, it goes on everywhere.
Holding back on judgments,
it’s probably a good guess that those in
charge of the schools here in Salem-
Keizer are overzealous and far too ag-
gressive in application of SKSD Man-
datory Reporting Guidelines; instead
of a light touch, they’ve chosen the
nuclear option. Offering counsel, they
are strongly advised to back off and
substitute educational means instead
of an effort at total control which will
only drive the whole matter further
underground where secrecy substi-
tutes for good sense. Should Superin-
tendent Christy Perry, her immediate
subordinates and board member deci-
sion-makers feel they must interfere in
the lives of youth to the extreme sug-
gested by them they want to do so,
then they are respectfully encour-
aged to seek positions in non-secular
schools where religious behaviors rule.
(Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)