OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 2016
The anxieties of impotence
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Call before
you dig
Good public service is more
than just reliable lights
he Pacific County (Wash.) Public Utility District’s
decision to replace aging power poles in an extraordi-
narily sensitive Chinook Indian cultural site is explainable
in only one way: It’s how it’s always been done. Which is to
say PUD management moves ahead with utter confidence
in its own judgment, without adequate reference to nonutil-
ity considerations.
T
In one way, this is under-
standable. Considering the
weather’s violence in a heavily
forested region, the reliability
of electrical service is com-
mendable. PUD managers and
crews are remarkably well paid
by local standards, but most
Paci¿c County residents don’t
begrudge them the money. Few
people have skills to run a util-
ity or the bravery and fortitude
it takes to maintain power in all
hours and conditions.
With full credit for all it
does well, the PUD was clum-
sy and tone deaf in its actions
and subsequent explana-
tions concerning the Chinook
Middle Village site.
PUD management knew the
site contained human remains;
its personnel were present
when they were discovered,
most recently finding some
during a stalled 2011 effort
to bury power lines. The site
will soon formally become
National Park Service prop-
erty. The above-ground inter-
pretive exhibits and walkways
there were constructed fol-
lowing delicate negotiations
with Chinook descendants. All
this is public record or can be
learned with a phone call.
Middle Village has been
identified as the likely summer
residence of Chief Comcomly,
who greeted Lewis and Clark
and went on to play a key
roll in the fur trade. Though
not a traditional cemetery for
the Chinook, it in effect be-
came one as their civilization
collapsed with the arrival of
European diseases. It is holy
ground and a site of potent
significance. That the U.S.
government doesn’t currently
say the Chinook meet every
technical legal standard for of-
ficial tribal status is immateri-
al. They are our neighbors. We
know their history, We know
they exist. It isn’t “political
correctness” to expect Pacific
County PUD to exercise good
manners in accordance with
this knowledge.
This is the latest strong
evidence that when elected
Pacific County PUD commis-
sioners move to hire a new
general manager upon the re-
tirement of Doug Miller, they
must include the public and
expand their search beyond
current staff. Yes, county res-
idents want the lights to stay
on. But they also expect all
public employees to behave as
public servants in the 21st cen-
tury, making a thorough effort
to include all stakeholders in
making decisions.
What shall we learn
from Flint’s bad water?
lint, Michigan, is a
Rorschach test. The lessons
people take away form the city’s
polluted drinking water stem
from their own perspectives.
The New York Times examined
emails from the governor’s
of¿ce, sees massive indiffer-
ence and notes that if these
complaints came from a white,
afÀuent community there would
have been immediate remedy.
The Wall Street Journal’s ed-
itorial page sees a cascade of
bad choices, beginning with a
Flint’s fateful error.
Matt Latimer, a speechwriter
to President George W. Bush, is
bafÀed at Republican presidential
candidates’ silence (“Republicans
ignore a poisoned city”).
If this were a biblical para-
ble, how would it be named?
The heedless elders and the poi-
soned children?
Nothing is more basic to
our lives than water and air —
clean water and clean air. It is
astounding that some industries
and some politicians (doing
F
their bidding) believe they can
degrade the de¿nition of clean
water.
Another recent parable
involving dirty water was
DuPont’s poisonous runoff into
a West Virginia stream. That
drew the legal action of a corpo-
rate lawyer named Rob Bilott.
Thanks to the Times headline
writer, that biblical parable
is “The lawyer who became
DuPont’s worst nightmare.”
In the upside-down politics
of 2016, in which conservatives
are anything but that, we who
reside far from the power cen-
ters — as did the people of Flint
— must look out for our health
and welfare. At the mouth of
the Columbia River, we sort of
learned that when former Gov.
John Kitzhaber changed policy
in order to wipe out a historical-
ly legitimate industry.
The lesson of Flint is that a
community may no longer ex-
pect government leaders and
bureaucrats to protect the most
basic elements of their health.
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times News Service
n 1936 George Orwell wrote
a magnificent essay called
Shooting an Elephant. Orwell
had been working as a British
police officer in Burma, en-
forcing colonial rule. An ele-
phant had gone “must,” bro-
ken its chains, trampled some
homes and killed a man.
I
As Orwell walked, gun in hand,
toward the elephant, a crowd of
more than 2,000 Burmese gathered
behind him. They hated him, but
it would be a
diverting spec-
tacle to see an
elephant shot
and they could
use the meat.
Orwell didn’t
want to shoot
the poor crea-
ture,
whose
David
“must,”
or
Brooks
frenzied state,
had passed and who was peace-
fully eating grass. But he felt the
pressure of the crowd behind him.
They’d laugh at him if he didn’t
kill the thing.
“I was only an absurd puppet
pushed to and fro by the will of
those yellow faces behind,” Orwell
wrote. And so he subjected the ani-
mal to a long and agonizing death.
In his essay nobody feels like
they have any power. The locals,
the imperial victims, sure didn’t.
Orwell, the guy with the gun,
didn’t feel like he had any. The im-
perialists back in London were too
far away.
That’s sort of the way much
of the world is today. As Anand
Giridharadas writes in The Inter-
national New York Times, “If any-
thing unites America in this frac-
tious moment it is a widespread
sentiment that power is somewhere
other than where you are.”
The Republican establishment
thinks the grass roots have the
power but the grass roots think the
reverse. The unions think the cor-
porations have the power but the
corporations think the startups do.
Regulators think Wall Street has
the power but Wall Street thinks
the regulators do. The Pew Re-
search Center asked Americans,
George
Orwell
There’s no
all-controlling
Wizard of Oz
to slay.
“Would you say your side has been
winning or losing more?” Six-
ty-four percent of Americans, with
majorities of both parties, believe
their side has been losing more.
These days people seem to un-
derestimate their own power or
suffer from what Giridharadas
calls the “anxiety of impotence.”
Sometimes when groups feel
oppressed, they organize by com-
ing up with concrete reform pro-
posals to empower themselves.
The Black Lives Matter movement
is doing this.
But in other cases the feeling
of absolute powerlessness can cor-
rupt absolutely. As psychological
research has shown, many people
who feel powerless come to feel
unworthy, and become complic-
it in their own oppression. Some
exaggerate the weight and size
of the obstacles in front of them.
Some feel dehumanized, forsaken,
doomed and guilty.
Today we live in a world of iso-
lation and atomization, where peo-
ple distrust their own institutions.
In such circumstances many peo-
ple respond to powerlessness with
pointless acts of self-destruction.
In the Palestinian territories, for
example, young people don’t orga-
nize or work with their government
to improve their prospects. They
wander into Israel, try to stab a
soldier or a pregnant woman and
get shot or arrested — every single
time. They throw away their lives
for a pointless and usually botched
moment of terrorism.
In a different way, the Ameri-
can election has been perverted by
feelings of powerlessness.
Americans are beset by com-
plex, intractable problems that
don’t have a clear villain: techno-
logical change displaces workers;
globalization and the rapid move-
ment of people destabilize commu-
nities; family structure dissolves;
the political order in the Middle
East teeters, the Chinese economy
craters, inequality rises, the global
order frays, etc.
To address these problems we
need big, responsible institutions
(power centers) that can mobilize
people, cobble together govern-
ing majorities and enact plans of
actions. In the U.S. context that
means functioning political parties
and a functioning Congress.
Those institutions have been
weakened of late. Parties have
been rendered weak by both cam-
paign finance laws and the Citi-
zens United decision, which have
cut off their funding streams and
given power to polarized super-do-
nors who work outside the party
system. Congress has been weak-
ened by polarization and disruptive
members who don’t believe in leg-
islating.
Instead of shoring up these in-
stitutions, many voters are inclined
to make everything worse. Plagued
by the anxiety of impotence many
voters are drawn to leaders who
pretend that our problems could be
solved by defeating some villain.
Donald Trump says stupid elites
are the problem. Ted Cruz says
it’s the Washington cartel. Bernie
Sanders says it’s Wall Street.
The fact is, for all the problems
we may have with Wall Street or
Washington, our biggest problems
are systemic — the disruptions
caused by technological progress
and globalization, mass migra-
tion, family breakdown and so on.
There’s no all-controlling Wizard
of Oz to slay.
If we’re to have any hope of
addressing big systemic problems
we’ll have to repair big institutions
and have functioning parties and a
functioning Congress. We have to
discard the anti-political, anti-in-
stitutional mood that is prevalent
and rebuild effective democratic
power centers.
This requires less atomization
and more collective action, fewer
strongmen but greater citizenship.
It requires the craft of political
architecture, not the demagogy of
destruction.
GOP gets Iran prisoner swap wrong
Rouhani predicted 5 per-
perfectly innocent, unjust-
cent growth — versus the
ly jailed hostages.
contracting, indeed hem-
Yes, and so what?
orrhaging, economy in
That’s just another way
prenegotiation 2012 and
ASHINGTON — Give of saying we have the
rule
of
law,
they
don’t.
It
2013.
President Obama credit.
doesn’t mean we aban-
On Saturday, the Ira-
His Iran nuclear deal may be di- don our hostages. Natan
nian transport minister
sastrous but the packaging was Sharansky was a prisoner
announced the purchase
of
conscience
who
spent
of 114 Airbuses from Eu-
brilliant.
eight
years
in
the
Gulag
rope. This inaugurates a
Charles
The near-simultaneous prison-
on totally phony charges.
rush of deals binding Eu-
Krauthammer
er exchange was meant to distract He was exchanged for
ropean companies to Iran,
from last Saturday’s of¿cial imple- two real Soviet spies. Does anyone thoroughly undermining Obama’s
mentation of the sanctions-lifting think we should have said no?
pipedream of “snapback sanctions”
The one valid criticism of the if Iran cheats.
deal.
Iranian swap is that we left one,
Cash-rich, reconnected with
And it did. The Republicans con- perhaps two, Americans behind and global banking and commerce, and
centrated almost all their ¿re on the unaccounted for. True. But the swap facing an Arab world collapsed into
itself was perfectly reasonable. And a miasma of raging civil wars, Iran
swap sideshow.
And in denouncing the swap, cleverly used by the administration has instantly become the dominant
to create a heartwarm- power of the Middle East. Not to
they were wrong. True,
ing human interest worry, argued the administration.
we should have made
In a
story to overshadow a The nuclear opening will temper
the prisoner release a
rotten diplomatic deal, Iranian adventurism and empower
precondition for ne-
stroke,
just as the Alan Gross Iranian moderates.
gotiations. But that
pre-emptive conces- Iran shed release sweetened a
The opposite is happening. And
Cuba deal that gave the it’s not just the ostentatious, illegal
sion was made long
store away to the Cas- ballistic missile launches; not just
ago (among many oth-
almost
tro brothers.
ers, such as granting
Iran’s president reacting to the most
four
The real story of puny retaliatory sanctions by or-
Iran in advance the
Jan. 16, 2016 dering his military to accelerate the
right to enrich urani-
decades Saturday,
—
“Implementation missile program; not just the video-
um). The remaining
question was getting
of rogue- Day” of the Iran deal taped and broadcast humiliation of
— was that it marks a seized U.S. sailors.
our prisoners released
state
historic inÀection point
before we gave away
Look at what the mullahs are
in the geopolitics of doing at home. Within hours of
all our leverage upon
status.
the Middle East. In a “implementation,” the regime dis-
implementation of the
stroke, Iran shed al- quali¿ed 2,96 of roughly 3,000
nuclear accord. We did.
Republicans say: We shouldn’t most four decades of rogue-state moderate candidates from even
negotiate with terror states. But status and was declared a citizen of running in parliamentary elections
we do and we should. How else do good standing of the international next month. And just to make sure
you get hostages back? And yes, community, open to trade, invest- we got the point, the supreme leader
of course negotiating encourages ment and diplomacy. This, with- reiterated that Iranian policy — ag-
further hostage taking. But there is out giving up, or even promising gressively interventionist and im-
always something to be gained by to change, its policy of subversion mutably anti-American — contin-
kidnapping Americans. This swap and aggression. This, without hav- ues unchanged.
does not affect that truth one way or ing forfeited its status as the world’s
In 1938, the morning after Mu-
greatest purveyor of terrorism.
the other.
nich, Europe woke up to Germany
Overnight, it went not just from as the continent’s dominant power.
And here, we didn’t give away
much. The seven released Iranians, pariah to player but from pariah Last Sunday, the Middle East woke
none of whom has blood on his to dominant regional power, Àush up to Iran as the regional hegemon,
hands, were sanctions busters (and with $100 billion in unfrozen assets with a hand — often predominant
a hacker), and sanctions are essen- and virtually free of international — in the future of Syria, Yemen,
sanctions. The oil trade alone will Iraq, the Gulf Arab states and, in
tially over now. The slate is clean.
But how unfair, say the critics. pump tens of billions of dollars into time, in the very survival of Israel.
We released prisoners duly convict- its economy. The day after Imple-
And we’re arguing over an
ed in a court of law. Iran released mentation Day, President Hassan asymmetric hostage swap.
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
W