PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 8, 2018
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
To the class of 2018
By graduation day most of Mc-
Nary’s class of 2018 will have decided
what they will do next—work, travel,
enter the military or prepare for col-
lege. Some of you will toss your mor-
tar boards into the air at the
ceremony vowing to be rid
of school forever. That’s via-
ble, that’s a choice. There are
no wrong choices when de-
signing your life. And that’s
what you will do, whether
your school days are over
forever or whether this
summer is just a respite from
your next educational step.
Whatever path you choose to fol-
low make it count. Over the past 11
years in this space we have tried to
be inspirational for graduates. Several
points have popped up every year, be-
cause, well, a classic is a classic...
Do no harm. Don’t be intolerant or
mean to others. Everyone is on their
own journey on their own timeline,
be patient. Don’t get angry unneces-
sarily—the country already has too
much faux rage about little things.
Don’t add to it.
No one’s perfect. People don’t al-
ways succeed the fi rst time. Winners
keep trying to attain their goals, learn-
ing from their mistakes
and setbacks. Don’t fear
failure. It took a lot of
failures to fi nally put man
on the moon or to de-
velop smartphones. Keep
at it, people admire those
who have perseverance,
not quitters.
Keep an open mind.
About everything—people, places,
things; a rigid mind makes for a small
person.
Live well and let others live well.
Be part of a solution, not part of a
problem. Respect others in mind and
body, respect your own body. When it
comes to your peers, be a mentor.
As a classic book of 60 years said,
life is a banquet. So it is, grab yourself
a heaping plate of life and dig in.
—LAZ
our
opinion
Water, the Keizer way
Keizer businesses and citizens are
due a standing ovation for the way
they helped our neighbors to the
south amid their contaminated water
crisis last week.
A health advisory for Detroit Lake
was issued due to toxics from blue-
green algae in the water made di-
rect contact unsafe for humans and
animals. Salem gets its drinking water
from Detroit Lake. Children under the
age of 6, the elderly and those with
compromised immune systems were
advised not to drink the water from
their taps. That sent Salem citizens
on a furious search for bottled water
which, unfortuately bred price goug-
ing by some retail outlets.
Keizer gets all its water from aqui-
fers under the ground and it is ac-
cessed with wells throughout the city.
It didn’t take long for Keizer busi-
nesses to start posting on social media
that the water was fi ne in our city and
Salem residents were invited to come
and get what they needed. Keizer
businessman Nigel Guisinger was
instrumental in getting a campaign
started through the Keizer Chamber
of Commerce to offer water to Sale-
mites. Soon, Facebook was fi lled with
posts from generous Keizer residents
and businesses inviting Salem to come
and fi ll up their containers. The ini-
tial advisory was lifted early this week,
but on Wednesday an advisory was re-
newed.
It is in America’s DNA to help oth-
ers. We do unto others as we wish they
would do unto us. It’s no different in
Keizer, we jump into action when our
neighbors need help.
Kudos to all the residents and busi-
nesses who opened their taps.
—LAZ
Shots across the river
Homeowners along the Willa-
mette River have been concerned
about stray bullets being fi red onto
the Keizer side of the river. They are
fearful that someone could get hurt,
even testifying before the Keizer
City Council imploring the city to
make it stop.
Those concerns were well-found-
ed. A riverfront home was pierced by
a bullet, coming within several feet
of an occupant before shattering a
backsplash in the home’s kitchen.
Polk County Sheriff ’s offi cers
were dispatched and cited four men
for reckless endangering and released
in lieu of arrest. That is of little solace
to those who live on the river. No
one should live in constant fear or
fl inch when they hear a loud noise—
that’s no way to live.
The quarry in Polk County has
been a favored site for gun enthusi-
asts for years. After a stray bullet inci-
#Justicefor
Shadow
dent in 2017 the owner of the prop-
erty was alerted and signs were put
up on the property to alert shooters
about the homes on the other side of
the river.
That, obviously, is not enough. No
one’s property or gun rights trump
the rights of others to live peacefully
and without fear of bullets smashing
into their homes or their bodies.
Mayor Cathy Clark and Police
Chief John Teague need to form a
united front and communicate with
the Polk County Sheriff and all the
Polk County Commissioners that
a solution must be found. It would
be better to solve this government
offi cial to government offi cial. We
would rather see that happen than
this incident open a protracted civil
action in the courts.
Keizer leaders need to be sure
their citizens are safe, nothing is more
important.
— LAZ
know where my cat is and
what happened to him. He
pointed north and said he
released my cat on prop-
erty north on River Road,
near Brooklake Road. My
heart sank.
I went there and
couldn’t fi nd him. The owner of the
property and I exchanged numbers
promising to call if he sees my cat.
What the onsite manager and the
resident did is wrong, wrong, wrong.
All this information was agonizing
to comprehend. My cat walked into
his baited trap, which he told me he
baited, and he took my pet and just re-
leased him in a fi eld some where. This
resident lives a block from my house.
My cat was missing for 11 days. The
owner of the River Road property
called to say he saw my cat. I rushed
over there and brought him home. I
want to thank my neighbors for let-
ting me know they were looking for
my cat, Shadow, and praying for his
safe return. I will never forget what
this man did to my cat. It’s animal
abuse.
Lori Beyeler
Keizer
letters
To the Editor:
When my cat went miss-
ing on May 23, I learned a
resident here at Briarwood
Estates traps cats. I started
investigating. I put up missing cat fl y-
ers. I talked with a lot of neighbors
that did not know, like me, till my cat
just disappeared.
The onsite manager confi rmed he
knew of a resident that trapped cats
and that he’d given permission to do
so. That is disturbing news. The onsite
manager said there was a feral/stray cat
issue in this park. I disagree; these are
people’s pets. If you trap any cat, you
take it to the Humane Society and get
the cat scanned for a microchip. My
cat is chipped, spayed and a member
of our family.
I spent every day he was miss-
ing looking for him. I was desperate
for answers. I asked the resident if he
traps cats. He said yes he did, along
with other animals. He said they
are a nuisance and use his good soil
as a litter box. I then asked him if he
trapped my cat. I told him I want to
Keizertimes
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Salem, Oregon
Thumb is on wrong side of scale
By MICHAEL GERSON
America suffers from a persis-
tent misunderstanding of the role of
character in public life. For some—
a diminishing few—political leaders
should be moral exemplars. They
should be men and women whom
children can look up to and emulate.
Democrats
surren-
dered this standard in
their defense of Bill
Clinton.
Republicans
are abandoning this stan-
dard in their defense of
Donald Trump. There is
apparently no remain-
ing constituency for the
belief that high offi ce
should involve moral
leadership.
Given human nature, this expec-
tation was always a recipe for disil-
lusionment. But while it is true that
politicians are not called to be pastors,
something has been lost in abandon-
ing the ideal of rectitude. Clinton did
not just conduct a quiet affair. He
exploited an unequal power relation-
ship for sexual favors. He expanded
the boundaries of acceptable exploi-
tation. Trump did not just [allegedly]
have a fl ing. He bragged about sexual
assault and dismissed it as locker-
room talk. He expanded the bound-
aries of acceptable misogyny.
It is one thing for public offi cials
to fail a moral standard. That makes
them human. It is something else to
shift a standard in favor of cruelty and
abuse. That makes them poor stew-
ards of public trust.
This points to an underestimated
role for politics. Politicians may not
be moral examples, but they help set
the margins of permissible behavior
and speech. I’m not talking about the
law. We have a Constitution that pro-
tects hurtful, even hateful language.
But public offi cials help determine
the shape of social stigma, which is
based on our self-conception as a
community.
Stigma has a value determined by
context. Social stigma against AIDS
or against mental illness damages
lives and undermines public health.
But the stigmas we feel
against misogyny and
against racism are tre-
mendous social achieve-
ments. Shifting those so-
cial expectations in favor
of decency was the hard,
sometimes
dangerous
work of generations.
And political leaders
—displaying good public
character—have helped determine
those expectations. It mattered when
Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker
T. Washington to dinner at the White
House. It helped break an oppressive
social convention against the social
mixing of blacks and whites. It mat-
tered when President Clinton began
the tradition of celebrating Eid al-
Fitr at the White House. It sent the
signal that American public traditions
reach beyond Protestantism, Catholi-
cism and Judaism. It also mattered
when Trump in 2017 discontinued
the White House Eid celebration.
A signifi cant factor in Trump’s
appeal has been the argument that
“political correctness” has gone too
far. There are college campuses—
yes, you, Evergreen State College—
where consciousness has been raised
into the stratosphere of silliness and
boorishness. But Trump’s political
use of this idea has had little to do
with academic freedom and disrup-
tive student protests. It has had ev-
erything to do with testing the limits
of prejudiced public language against
migrants (particularly Mexicans) as
the
opinion
of
others
potential rapists and Muslims (partic-
ularly refugees) as potential terrorists.
This is a failure of public character
with serious consequences. Trump is
urging Americans to drink at a poi-
soned well of intolerance. This de-
sensitizes some people to the moral
seriousness of prejudice. It creates
an atmosphere in which bigots gain
confi dence and traction. And one sad
social consequence is the embold-
ened racism of Roseanne Barr and
many like her, many of whom surely
believe —on good evidence—that
the president of the United States
is on their side. The combination of
Trumpism, social media and (at least
according to Barr) sleeping pills cre-
ate a powerful disinhibition to hatred.
There are many drawbacks to be-
ing ignorant of and indifferent to his-
tory. But one of the worst is a failure
to appreciate the depth of American
racism and the heroism of the long
struggle against it. We are a country
in which one out of seven people
was owned by another. We had an
American version of apartheid with-
in living memory. It was a hard-won
lesson that racism is a form of oppres-
sion that destroys the soul of the op-
pressor as well. We honor that lesson,
not out of tender sensibilities, but
because of long, diffi cult experience.
Much of what is attacked as politi-
cal correctness in politics (as opposed
to on campus) is really politeness, re-
spect and historical memory.
“I had on my side,” said Frederick
Douglass, “all the invisible forces of
the moral government of the uni-
verse.” True enough. But it eventu-
ally helped to have reinforcement
from the U.S. government as well.
And it hurts to have a president of
poor character placing his thumb on
the other side of the moral scale.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
We all have to fi ght for America
Our nation thankfully recognizes
a number of Americans who have
contributed greatly to the country’s
growth and development as bright
and shining stars for all others to em-
ulate. Former President John Ken-
nedy’s Profi les in Courage pays homage
to a number of these citizens while
American literature and media have
added a rather lengthy list of Ameri-
cans deserving special recognition in
addition to JFK’s collection.
Meanwhile, we’ve also
had a dark side. Although
the Ku Klux Klan was fi rst
organized immediately after
the Civil War and helped
to end Reconstruction in
the former Confederacy, it
had a re-birth during the
1920s and ‘30s when it in-
voked racial hatred toward
African-Americans throughout the
country and directed its wrath toward
Catholic Church members and new
immigrants, mainly from China. The
KKK has endured but it has been too
offensively despicable for mainstream
Americans, subsuming it to unaccept-
able status in modern times.
The so-called Red Scare was an-
other dark episode that commands
attention, this time in the 1950s.
Then-U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy,
a Republican from Wisconsin, rose
to fame and power when, in Febru-
ary, 1950, he charged that “hundreds”
of “known communists” were in the
U.S. State Department. His Red Scare
charges convinced millions of Ameri-
cans that communists had infi ltrated
all of American life. After McCarthy
attacked the U.S. Army as communist
infi ltrated he was viewed as a person
“without a sense of decency” and sent
to history’s dust bin.
It is high time once more to take
issue with a D.C. resident, President
Donald Trump, who, daily, tells lies,
presents falsehoods, perpetrates tall-
tale whoopers, speaks half-truths along
with scary inconsistencies, commits
snake-oil salesman exaggerations, es-
pouses conspiracy theories and delu-
sional, self-serving analy-
ses, and, of late, trumpets
misbegotten pardons, de-
structive tariffs and more
unfounded mendacities
that have been proven
untrue and unfounded.
By the way, unless our
U.S. Constitution with
its separation of powers
no longer governs this land, Trump
cannot pardon himself.
It all adds up to a moment in
America where a majority of us who
are dedicated to preserve and sustain
what we most appreciate and value
must protest the mindlessness and ap-
parent self-protections by a president
who blatantly embitters and poisons
our public culture. Further, Donald
Trump’s collusion with Russia was
concretely established by way of the
meeting by his son, Don, Jr, his son-
in-law, Jared Kushner, and his former
campaign manager, Paul Manafort,
when they met with Russian foreign
agents to discuss “dirt” against Hill-
ary Clinton and her presidential cam-
paign.
At the same time, it has been whol-
gene
h.
mcintyre
ly disheartening and shockingly disap-
pointing that, among the 535 voting
members in the U.S. Congress, so few
have come forward to denounce the
divisive, antagonistic and reckless lan-
guage from Trump that the American
people fi nd more often offensive and
un-American than not. Examples of
the few brave souls who’ve stepped up
to defend truths include a Republican
senator from Arizona, Jeff Flake, a rep-
resentative from South Carolina, Trey
Gowdy, and even an anchor on Fox
News, Shepard Smith, has been coura-
geous enough to stand up.
Our Oregon representatives in the
House have been silent save for the
one Republican in the state’s second
district. Otherwise, the others from the
remaining districts have been in mute
mode for reasons not disclosed. Our
senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merk-
ley, have been outspoken at times but,
to this writer’s knowledge, have never
confronted Trump to his face.
The future of our nation as a de-
mocracy, with a Constitution and Bill
of Rights, our institutions (especially
the Department of Justice now), laws,
traditions and norms, is at stake by
what’s happening in our nation’s capi-
tal. Personally, this writer cannot fath-
om a future where what’s been held in
the highest esteem could be lost to a
leader with little to no respect for the
rule by law. Faith is that the American
people will rise in great numbers as
they have in the past to oppose au-
thoritarian overreach by what’s of-
fensive and unacceptable for the U.S.
present and the future.
(Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)