OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2016
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
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
OUR VIEW
About the ‘basket of deplorables’
By CHARLES BLOW
New York Times News Service
L
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Sawyer Linnett waves to his grandmother for a photo Saturday, while
an U.S. Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk hovers in the background. Air
Station Astoria, located at the Astoria Regional Airport since 1966,
hosted a celebration for 100 years of Coast Guard aviation.
Coast Guard
to the rescue
Coast Guard aviation preserves
Columbia River lives and economy
T
here can be few if any federal services with a stronger
local reputation than the search and rescue operations
performed by Air Station Astoria.
As we reported Monday, the air station welcomed guests
Saturday in honor of a century of Coast Guard aviation
nationwide, and about half a century here at the mouth of the
Columbia River.
Even as Buoy 10 salmon season winds down this week,
there will continue to be many recreational boaters on the
water — in addition to our region’s diverse mix of commer-
cial isheries, which often operate out of sight of land. It
will soon again be time for Dungeness crab season in Paciic
Northwest waters, one of the most hazardous occupations in
the nation.
All these isheries are highly dependent on the Coast
Guard, and often speciically the aviation division.
Particularly come crab season, the sound and sight of a Coast
Guard MH-60 Jayhawk making a beeline out into the ocean
is cause for both anxiety and relief: Anxiety that a crabber
may be in serious danger, but relief that help is quickly on the
way.
Newsworthy events
Coast Guard helicopters are routinely engaged in some
of our region’s most newsworthy events — everything from
evacuating injured merchant mariners from cargo ships out
in the Paciic to extracting injured climbers from local moun-
tains. A search of the internet inds nearly endless stories of
pragmatic and low-key heroism on the part of air crews and
not a whiff of controversy.
This dedication was most recently on display in Long
Beach, Washington, last week, as an air crew and motor life-
boat searched through the night for a young woman swimmer.
Though unsuccessful in this tragic instance, the effort was a
shining example of the Coast Guard’s intense focus on pub-
lic service.
Meanwhile, in terms of watercraft, the Coast Guard contin-
ues its acquisition program for 58 Sentinel-class fast-response
cutters at a cost of nearly $3.8 billion. The Coast Guard took
delivery of the 18th and 19th of these vessels this summer.
Two will eventually be stationed in this region, presumably
either in Astoria or Newport.
Physical assets and personnel
The concentration of Coast Guard physical assets and per-
sonnel here at the mouth of the Columbia must be counted
as one of our foremost advantages. It’s impossible to imag-
ine what our economy and society would be like without the
energy, talent and professionalism the Coast Guard displays
on land, air and sea.
et’s get straight to it: Hillary
Clinton’s comments Friday at
a fundraiser that half of Donald
Trump’s supporters could be put in a
“basket of deplorables” wasn’t a smart
political play.
Candidates do themselves a tre-
mendous disservice when they attack
voters rather than
campaigns. Whatever
advantage is pro-
cured through the
rallying of one’s own
base is outweighed
by what will be read
as divisiveness and disdain.
Here is Clinton’s full quote:
“You know, to just be grossly
generalistic, you could put half of
Trump’s supporters into what I call
the basket of deplorables. Right?
The racist, sexist, homophobic,
xenophobic, Islamophobic — you
name it. And unfortunately there are
people like that. And he has lifted
them up. He has given voice to their
websites that used to only have 11,000
people — now 11 million. He tweets
and retweets their offensive, hateful,
mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of
those folks — they are irredeemable,
but thankfully they are not America.
Then, she continued: “But the other
basket — and I know this because
I see friends from all over America
here — I see friends from Florida
and Georgia and South Carolina and
Texas — as well as, you know, New
York and California — but that other
basket of people are people who feel
that the government has let them
down, the economy has let them down,
nobody cares about them, nobody
worries about what happens to their
lives and their futures, and they’re just
desperate for change. It doesn’t really
even matter where it comes from. They
don’t buy everything he says, but he
seems to hold out some hope that their
lives will be different. They won’t
wake up and see their jobs disappear,
lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in
a dead end. Those are people we have
to understand and empathize with as
well.”
Too little attention
That second basket got too little
attention. Context doesn’t provide the
sizzle on which shock media subsists.
Noted.
What Clinton said was impolitic,
but it was not incorrect. There are
things a politician cannot say. Luckily,
I’m not a politician.
Trump is a deplorable candidate
— to put it charitably — and anyone
who helps him advance his racial, reli-
gious and ethnic bigotry is part of that
bigotry. Period. Anyone who elevates
a sexist is part of that sexism. The
same goes for xenophobia. You can’t
conveniently separate yourself from
the detestable part of him because you
sense in him the promise of cultural or
economic advantage. That hair cannot
be split.
Furthermore, one doesn’t have to
actively hate to contribute to a culture
that allows hate to lourish.
It doesn’t matter how lovely your
family, how honorable your work or
service, how devout your faith — if
you place ideological adherence or
economic self interest above the moral
imperative to condemn and denounce a
demagogue, then you are deplorable.
Active support
And there is some evidence that
Trump’s supporters don’t simply have
a passive, tacit acceptance of an unde-
sirable platform, but instead have an
active set of beliefs that support what
is deplorable in Trump.
In state after state that Trump
won during the primaries, he won a
majority or near majority of voters
who supported a temporary ban on
Muslims entering this country and
who supported deporting immigrants
who are in this country illegally.
In June a Reuters/Ipsos poll found:
“Nearly half of Trump’s supporters
described African-Americans as more
‘violent’ than whites. The same pro-
portion described African-Americans
as more ‘criminal’ than whites, while
40 percent described them as more
‘lazy’ than whites.”
A Pew poll released in February
found that 65 percent of Republicans
believe the next president should
“speak bluntly, even if critical of
Islam as a whole” when talking about
Islamic extremists.
Another Reuters/Ipsos online
poll in July found that 58 percent of
Trump supporters have a “somewhat
unfavorable” view of Islam and 78
percent believe Islam was more likely
to encourage acts of terrorism.
A February Public Policy Polling
survey found “Trump’s support in
South Carolina is built on a base of
voters among whom religious and
racial intolerance pervades.” What the
poll found about those South Carolina
supporters’ beliefs was truly shocking:
— Eighty percent of likely Trump
primary voters supported Trump’s
proposed ban on Muslims.
— Sixty-two percent supported
creating a national database of
Muslims and 40 percent supported
shutting down mosques in the United
States.
— Thirty-eight percent wished the
South had won the Civil War.
— Thirty-three percent thought the
practice of Islam should be illegal in
this country.
— Thirty-two percent supported
the policy of Japanese internment
during World War II.
— Thirty-one percent would sup-
port a ban on homosexuals entering
the country.
On Saturday, Clinton issued a
statement pointing out that “I regret
saying ‘half’ — that was wrong.”
Place the percentage where you
will — or don’t — but the fact is
indisputable.
I understand that people recoil
at the notion that they are part of a
pejorative basket. I understand the
relexive resistance to having your
negative beliefs disrobed and your
sense of self dressed down.
I understand your outrage, but I’m
unmoved by it. If the basket its …
Thugs and kisses on Russia
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
F
irst of all, let’s get this straight:
The Russian Federation of
2016 is not the Soviet Union of
1986. True, it covers most of the same
territory and is run by some of the
same thugs. But the
Marxist ideology
is gone, and so is
the superpower
status. We’re talking
about a more or less
ordinary corrupt
petrostate here, although admittedly a
big one that happens to have nukes.
I mention all of this because
Donald Trump’s effusive praise for
Vladimir Putin — which actually
relects a fairly common sentiment on
the right — seems to have confused
some people.
On one side, some express puzzle-
ment over the spectacle of right-wing-
ers — the kind of people who used
to yell “America, love it or leave
it!” — praising a Russian regime. On
the other side, a few people on the left
are anti-anti-Putinists, denouncing
criticism of Trump’s Putin-love as
“red-baiting.” But today’s Russia isn’t
communist, or even leftist; it’s just
an authoritarian state, with a cult of
personality around its strongman, that
showers beneits on an immensely
wealthy oligarchy while brutally sup-
pressing opposition and criticism.
And that, of course, is what many
on the right admire.
Am I being unfair? Could praise
for Russia’s de facto dictator relect
appreciation of his substantive
achievements? Well, let’s talk
about what the Putin regime has,
in fact, accomplished, starting with
economics.
Putin came to power at the end of
1999, as Russia was recovering from
a severe inancial crisis, and his irst
eight years were marked by rapid
economic growth. This growth can,
however, be explained with just one
word: oil.
For Russia is, as I said, a petro-
state: Fuels account for more than
two-thirds of its exports, manufactures
barely a ifth. And oil prices more
than tripled between early 1999 and
2000; a few years later they more than
tripled again. Then they plunged, and
so did the Russian economy, which
has done very badly in the past few
years.
Putin would actually have some-
thing to boast about if he had man-
aged to diversify Russia’s exports.
And this should have been possible:
The old regime left behind a large
cadre of highly skilled workers.
In fact, Russian émigrés have
been a key force behind Israel’s
remarkable technology boom — and
the Putin government appears to have
no trouble recruiting talented hackers
to break into Democratic National
Committee iles. But Russia wasn’t
going to realize its technology poten-
tial under a regime where business
success depends mainly on political
connections.
So Putin’s economic management
is nothing to write home about.
Russia does, of course, have a big
military, which it has used to annex
Crimea and support rebels in eastern
Ukraine. But this muscle-lexing has
made Russia weaker, not stronger.
Finally, what about soft power, the
ability to persuade through the attrac-
tiveness of one’s culture and values?
Russia has very little — except,
maybe, among right-wingers who ind
Putin’s macho posturing and ruthless-
ness attractive.
Which brings us back to the signif-
icance of the Putin cult, and the way
this cult has been eagerly joined by
the Republican nominee for president.
There are good reasons to worry
about Trump’s personal connections
to the Putin regime (or to oligarchs
close to that regime, which is effec-
tively the same thing.) How crucial
has Russian money been in sustaining
Trump’s ramshackle business empire?
There are hints that it may have been
very important indeed, but given
Trump’s secretiveness and his refusal
to release his taxes, nobody really
knows.
Beyond that, however, admiring
Putin means admiring someone who
has contempt for democracy and civil
liberties.
When Trump and others praise
Putin as a “strong leader,” they don’t
mean that he has made Russia great
again, because he hasn’t. He has
accomplished little on the economic
front, and his conquests, such as they
are, are fairly pitiful. What he has
done, however, is crush his domestic
rivals: Oppose the Putin regime, and
you’re likely to end up imprisoned or
dead. Strong!