OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 2016
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
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HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
OUR VIEW
The Olympics make a grown man cry
By FRANK BRUNI
New York Times News Service
EO Media Group/File Photo
Billions of burrowing shrimp like this one inhabit Willapa Bay,
churning up the bottom into a thick paste that suffocates oysters.
Get out of the
way and let oyster
growers survive
Nobody likes using pesticides, but
shrimp control is necessary
I
t’s best to think of the oyster growers of Washington’s Willapa
Bay as farmers, with the many of the same fundamental worries
and pragmatic conservation ethics as their peers on dry land.
Worries include controlling weeds and pests, making a proit, and
being allowed to use irsthand knowledge to grow safe and nutri-
tious foods with a minimum of interference. Ethics start with being
multigenerational stewards of amazing Willapa Bay — safeguard-
ing it from environmental damage. Like all ethical farmers, they
are passionate about food safety. In fact, they are fanatical about it:
Willapa oysters, and the men and women who grow them, are all
premium quality.
The oyster industry is among the Lower Columbia region’s larg-
est economic contributors, generating at least $35 million in annual
sales and supporting a payroll that recirculates throughout Paciic
and Clatsop counties.
Oyster growers are in the midst of what many believe to be a
make-or-break struggle for economic survival, as outside forces
essentially attempt to unilaterally impose an ideologically pure form
of organic growing on their entire local industry.
Gentler chemical
Well-intentioned but lacking in knowledge of the oyster industry
and local conditions, predominantly urban activists have for decades
fought efforts to use chemical sprays to control an exploding popu-
lation of native burrowing shrimp.
Their concern isn’t totally senseless. Nobody is delighted by the
idea of pesticides being used in connection with food.
After a long legal wrangle, oyster growers phased out a common
but stronger chemical and made plans to substitute a highly diluted
application of the pesticide imidacloprid. Related to nicotine, it is
the most widely used insecticide in the world.
Spraying opponents accurately call imidacloprid a neurotoxin, a
hot-button word that fails to acknowledge that coffee and all sorts of
other common products contain neurotoxins. Should we avoid intro-
ducing neurotoxins into the environment? Perhaps so, but the incon-
sequential amount of imidacloprid requested for Willapa Bay is a
strange place to draw the line. Elsewhere in the Paciic Northwest,
large quantities are used on an array of terrestrial crops.
Imidacloprid is more benign than the chemical it would replace,
leaves no residue in oysters and swiftly disappears from the water.
It’s not even strong enough to directly kill the shrimp, but only
makes them susceptible to suffocation. Nothing but shrimp grow on
infested mudlats, while oyster beds support a broad cross section
of life. Fewer shrimp mean more crab, more ish, more birds — in
addition to more oysters and more money in the local economy.
In Tillamook Bay, burrowing shrimp are a leading culprit in the
collapse of a once-thriving shellish industry.
There are efforts to try other growing techniques, no longer plac-
ing oysters directly on tidal lats. Most Willapa oystermen, based
on decades of experience, say growing oysters on elevated plastic
lines and cages above the shrimp-infested bottom is impractical in
the stormy and tide-tossed bay, with the plastic itself likely to cause
environmental harm.
Toxic politics
This controversy really comes down to politics and the willing-
ness of politicians including Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to throw
oyster growers under the bus in order to notch a symbolic win
for environmental purity. Is empty symbolism worth sacriicing a
way of life that has seen Willapa Bay survive into the 21st century
largely intact and healthy? Is it worth driving a stake through the
economy of a struggling rural county and that of its neighbors?
Who are we going to believe? Oystermen, or out-of-town
do-gooders?
Agencies, politicians and activists who have never set foot on the
mud of Willapa should get out of the way and let oyster growers and
the bay survive.
S
omewhere between the Zika sto-
ries, the doping stories and the
stories about what a fetid, toxic
swamp Rio really is, I got the mes-
sage: I was supposed to feel cynical
about these Olympics, the way we
feel cynical about
pretty much every-
thing these days.
I was supposed
to marvel at our
talent for making
messes, cutting cor-
ners, evading responsibility, procras-
tinating. Rio was a testament to that,
both as the host of the games and as a
sublime, wretched theater of human-
ity. All the promises we fail to keep,
all the plans that go awry: They were
and would be on vivid display. I was
supposed to shake my head in dis-
gust. Sigh in frustration.
Instead I cried, and I mean good
tears. It was Monday morning, and
I was telling someone what he’d
missed on Sunday night: how Amer-
ican swimmer Michael Phelps deied
age and his own stabs at self-destruc-
tion to swim toward yet another gold,
in a men’s relay.
How American gymnast Simone
Biles, in the team qualifying round,
responded to the gaudy expecta-
tions for her not by crumbling but by
meeting, even surpassing, every one
of them.
And then there was that tiny wisp
of a Brazilian girl — 4-foot-4, 16
years old — who loated onto the
balance beam, whirled the length of
it and turned in a near perfect routine
that no one expected. The roar from
her hometown crowd was so loud, so
true, that I’m certain it crossed time
zones. I bet it traversed the strato-
sphere. No lottery winner, no matter
the purse, has ever matched the glow
of elation on her face.
I hadn’t even reached the part
about the British gymnast who tum-
bled onto her head, stood up dazed
and kept on going when I myself had
to stop, because I was suddenly so
choked up that I couldn’t get another
word out.
Don’t tell me what’s wrong with
the Olympics. Let me tell you what’s
right with them.
In a world rife with failure and
bitter compromise, they’re dedi-
cated to dreaming and to the propo-
sition that limits are entirely negotia-
ble, because they relect only what
has been done to date and not what’s
doable in time.
They make the case that part of
being fully alive is pushing yourself
as far as you can go. Every Olympic
record, every personal best and every
unlikely comeback is an individual
achievement, yes, but it’s also a uni-
versal example and metaphor.
The swimmer Dana Vollmer, a
gold medalist in 2012, stopped train-
ing, became a mother and attended
to her newborn. But the pool still
beckoned, and last weekend, just 17
months after giving birth, she won a
silver and a bronze in Rio. Good for
her. Good for all women who don’t
want to obey some timeline that they
never signed on to or stay in a box of
someone else’s construction.
These champions usually aren’t
children of extreme privilege. Biles
was separated from her mother, who
battled drug and alcohol addiction, at
an early age. Others had worse odds
and more daunting setbacks.
But they had a drive more power-
ful than that. They swapped resent-
ment for goals. And they worked.
By God, did they work. We tend to
marvel at their freakish gifts, but we
should marvel even more at their
freakish devotion. That’s what made
the difference.
They invested hour upon hour,
day after day. They sacriiced idle
time and other pursuits. They honed
a conidence that eludes most of us
and summoned a poise that we can
only imagine. They took risks, big
ones.
And they pressed on, because
there was this thing that they wanted
so very, very badly and the only way
to know if they could get it was to
put everything on the line.
I’m no naif. I know that there’s
another, darker side to this — that
some of them are overly preoccu-
pied with fame, with riches. At least
they’re earning it.
I know that there are laws in the
system, even corruption. I’m reading
and I’m hearing plenty about that,
about the inane remarks that NBC’s
commentators have made, and about
the excessive commercial breaks that
the network builds into the prime-
time telecast. A certain crassness and
greed have taken over. It’s true.
But I fear that with the Olym-
pics, as with so much else, we’ve let
the language of complaint supplant
the language of wonder, and there’s
wonder aplenty here.
Just watch Phelps kick or Biles
vault heavenward, a force of will
seemingly bound for the stars. Just
think about what it means to aim that
high, commit that much and invite
the eyes of the world to see it all
come together or all fall apart.
If that doesn’t put a lump in your
throat and a tear in your eye, you’re
made of stone.
Trump’s wink wink to ‘Second Amendment people’
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times News Service
A
nd that, ladies and gentle-
men, is how Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin got
assassinated.
His right-wing opponents just kept
delegitimizing him as a “traitor” and
“a Nazi” for wanting to make peace
with the Palestinians and give back
part of the Land of Israel. Of course,
all is fair in politics, right? And they
had God on their side, right? They
weren’t actually tell-
ing anyone to assas-
sinate Rabin. That
would be horrible.
But there are
always people
down the line who
don’t hear the caveats. They just hear
the big message: The man is ille-
gitimate, the man is a threat to the
nation, the man is the equivalent of a
Nazi war criminal. Well, you know
what we do with people like that,
don’t you? We kill them.
And that’s what the Jewish
extremist Yigal Amir did to Rabin.
Why not? He thought he had permis-
sion from a whole segment of Israel’s
political class.
In September, I wrote a column
warning that Donald Trump’s lan-
guage toward immigrants could
end up inciting just this kind of vio-
lence. I never in my wildest dreams,
though, thought he’d actually — in
his usual coy, twisted way — suggest
that Hillary Clinton was so intent on
taking away the Second Amendment
right to be bear arms that maybe Sec-
ond Amendment enthusiasts could do
something to stop her. Exactly what?
Oh, Trump left that hanging.
“Hillary wants to abolish, essen-
tially abolish, the Second Amend-
ment,” Trump said at a rally in Wilm-
ington, North Carolina, on Tuesday.
“By the way, and if she gets to pick
her judges, nothing you can do, folks.
Although the Second Amendment
people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Of course Trump’s handlers, rec-
ognizing just how incendiary were
his words, immediately denied that
he was suggesting that gun owners do
anything harmful toward Clinton. Oh
my God, never. Trump, they insisted,
was just referring to the “power of
uniication.” You know those Second
Amendment people, they just love to
get on buses and vote together.
But that is not what he said. What
he said was ambiguous — slightly
menacing, but with just enough plau-
sible deniability that, of course, he
was not suggesting an assassination.
Again, it’s just like the Rabin story.
When I wrote about this issue back
in the fall it was to urge readers to
see the new movie “Rabin: The Last
Day,” by the Israeli director Amos
Gitai, timed for the 20th anniversary
of Rabin’s assassination.
As The Times’ Isabel Kershner
reported from Israel when the ilm
was released, it “is unambiguous
about the forces it holds responsible”
— the extremist rabbis and militant
settlers who branded Rabin a traitor,
the right-wing politicians who rode
the “wave of toxic incitement against
Rabin as they campaigned against
the Oslo accords,” and the security
services who failed to heed the warn-
ings that the incitement could get out
of hand.
“Mr. Rabin is almost invisible in
the irst two hours of the ilm,” she
reported. “Benjamin Netanyahu,
the opposition leader at the time, is
shown in now-infamous historical
footage addressing a feverish right-
wing rally from a balcony in Jeru-
salem’s Zion Square, as protesters
below shouted for the death of Rabin
— the ‘traitor’ — and held up photo-
montage posters of him dressed in an
SS uniform.”
Netanyahu, now prime minister,
insisted he never saw the posters or
heard the curses.
I am sure that is what Trump’s
supporters will say, too. But Trump
knows what he is doing, and it is so
dangerous in today’s world. In the
last year we have seen a spate of
lone-wolf acts of terrorism in Amer-
ica and Europe by men and women
living on the fringes of society, some
with petty criminal records, often
with psychological problems, often
described as “loners,” and almost
always deeply immersed in fringe
jihadist social networks that heat
them up. They hear the signal in the
noise. They hear the inspiration and
the permission to do God’s work.
They are not cooled by uninished
sentences.
After all, an informal Trump
adviser on veteran affairs, Al Bal-
dasaro, a Republican state represen-
tative from New Hampshire, already
declared that Clinton should be “shot
for treason” for her handling of the
Benghazi terrorist attack.
During the Republican conven-
tion, with its repeated chants about
Clinton of “lock her up,” a U.S.-
based columnist for Israel’s Haaretz
newspaper, Chemi Shalev, wrote:
“Like the extreme right in Israel,
many Republicans conveniently
ignore the fact that words can kill.
There are enough people with a ten-
dency for violence that cannot dis-
tinguish between political stagecraft
and practical exhortations to rescue
the country by any available means.
If anyone has doubts, they could
use a short session with Yigal Amir,
Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, who was
inspired by the rabid rhetoric hurled
at the Israeli prime minister in the
wake of the Oslo Accords.”
People are playing with ire here,
and there is no bigger lamethrower
than Donald Trump. Forget poli-
tics; he is a disgusting human being.
His children should be ashamed of
him. I only pray that he is not sim-
ply defeated, but that he loses all 50
states so that the message goes out
across the land — unambiguously,
loud and clear: The likes of you
should never come this way again.