OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 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
So long, SeaPort.
Hello, light rail?
Better bus service, other travel
options are better it for coast
F
ull-scale bankruptcy liquidation of SeaPort Airlines is the
least-surprising news all month.
The company was the latest to try to bring air service
between Astoria and Portland and Newport between 2008 and
2010, and has continued trying to make its business proitable
since then, for example in Pendleton. Its name alludes to an orig-
inal plan of connecting smaller markets to national airlines in
Seattle and Portland.
Like previous attempts to expand rural air service in Oregon
and Washington, SeaPort relied to
a large extent on government sub-
sidies, most recently under the fed-
eral Essential Air Service program.
EAS and state-funded subsidies are
well-intentioned efforts to jump start
economic development, while boost-
Musashi1600/wikimedia
ing
the ability of rural Americans to
While air service between
reach
needed healthcare and other
the North Coast and Portland
has proven economically urban conveniences.
unsustainable, it’s possible
But legislative and congressional
to imagine designing more
convenient ways for local patience with these subsidies eventu-
residents to gain access to ally fades. Air service must stand on
Portland MAX system.
its own two feet — or to use a less
hackneyed metaphor, ly on its own
two wings. It is very dificult to make a success of a small regional
airline. Commenting to USA Today about the airline he co-founded,
Kent Crafort said regarding SeaPort skeptics, “I don’t think people
are intentionally being mean. … They’re just realistic about the his-
tory of this industry and the likelihood (a) new start-up will not sur-
vive. For every group of guys like myself and my partners, there’re
10 groups that have tried the same thing and failed.”
Dissecting the various failed efforts to provide air service out of
Astoria Regional Airport in Warrenton would make an interesting
subject for a business school dissertation. But the fundamental chal-
lenges are obvious. No matter how imperfect highway connections
are between here and Portland, you can get in your car anytime and
be to the Portland airport in under two hours. Even counting in the
expense and inconvenience of parking, a person’s time has to be
precious indeed to justify lying rather than driving to make an air
connection at PDX. It is time to consider this issue dead and buried.
There is, however, a larger discussion still to be had about
enhancing transportation options between the North Coast and the
I-5 corridor. Any similar route in Europe, or even in many eco-
nomically disadvantaged regions of the world, would be served by
a passenger rail line and likely by several competing bus systems.
Particularly as driverless technology matures, it’s possible to
imagine a time when buses circulate between the coast and city
much more frequently than the three Astoria departure times now
available at 8:30 a.m., 2:45 and 6 p.m. Even now, it’s conceivable
that additional service might hook the coast into the TriMet MAX
system’s western terminus in Hillsboro.
Extending light rail to the coast may remain a pipe dream for
decades to come, but the success of the ride-sharing service Uber
demonstrates that when government gets out of the way and
allows private industry to succeed, everyone can beneit.
The age of distrust
By ROGER COHEN
New York Times News Service
A
THENS, Greece — I
have a profound respect
for the intelligence of
the voter. Winston Churchill is
often quoted as saying that the
best argument against democracy
is a five-minute conversation
with the average voter, but more
important is what he actually
said in the House
of Commons
on Oct. 31,
1944: “At the
bottom of all the
tributes paid to
democracy is the
little man, walking into the little
booth, with a little pencil, mak-
ing a little cross on a little bit of
paper — no amount of rhetoric
or voluminous discussion can
possibly palliate the overwhelm-
ing importance of that point.”
Nobody, looking back at the
irst 16 years of this century, can
suggest that the political and
inancial elites who brought you
the euro crisis, the war in Iraq,
the Great Recession of 2008,
growing inequality and (at least
until last year in the United States)
middle-class income stagnation
have not made some very seri-
ous mistakes, of very enduring
consequences, with very startling
impunity.
No wonder experts are increas-
ingly viewed as being in the busi-
ness of bamboozling for their own
ends. Ordinary folk reckon the
system is rigged, that elites are not
in it for the people but for money.
This is the Age of Distrust. No
two presidential candidates have
ever been as distrusted as Donald
Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Technology
The mistakes that I mentioned
occurred in the midst of a tech-
nological whirlwind that moved
factories offshore and migrants
onshore, and offered huge oppor-
tunity for the initiated at the hubs
of globalization’s churn while
stripping many outlying places
and outcast people of their raison
d’être.
Technology is a wonderful
thing if you are putting it to use,
less so if it is putting an end to
your usefulness.
Many people in liberal democ-
racies feel they are being tossed
hither and thither by forces beyond
their control — nowhere more so
than in Greece, where national
elections in recent years — and
there have been a lot of them —
have revealed an almost complete
disconnect between the vote itself
and any tangible effect.
What then is democracy, a
mere game?
The unease has been com-
pounded by the sense of insecurity
instilled by jihadist terrorism and
other violence. Bombings in New
York and New Jersey and a stab-
bing attack at a Minnesota mall
are still under investigation, but
fear often begets intolerance and
the quest for a ruthless leader.
All this is the backdrop to
Trump, to Marine Le Pen in
France, to Brexit, to the nationalist
governments dominating Central
Europe, to the rise in Germany
of the rightist Alternative fur
Deutschland, to the vogue for
authoritarian models — in short,
to the challenges facing liberal
democracies.
The answer is
not to build
walls. Western
societies
need to build
education and
innovation and
opportunity.
Marx noted that history repeats
itself, irst as tragedy, then as
farce. The British decision to
exit the European Union was the
exception — simultaneous tragedy
and farce, a disaster abetted by
lies, energized by a buffoon and
consummated in mayhem.
This was the moment when
it became irrefutable that some
of the very foundations of the
postwar world and the spread of
liberal democracy — free trade,
free markets, more open borders,
fact-based debate, ever greater
integration — had collapsed.
Trust of the people
I am pessimistic in the short
term, optimistic in the long term.
The problems cannot be
righted in short order. Politicians
are going to have to work very
hard to earn back the trust of the
people. A serious issue exists with
what Stephen Walt of Harvard
University has called the “ruling
elites in many liberal societies
and especially the United
States, where money and special
interests have created a corrupt
political class that is out of touch
with ordinary people, interested
mostly in enriching themselves,
and immune to accountability.”
This has to end.
Democracy has to deliver —
not just to the rich but also to the
most vulnerable. When democracy
creates wealth on a broad scale
there is no tension between it and
capitalism. But when that is not
the case, the value of democracy
becomes less clear to some. There
are tensions between national
sovereignty, open global markets
and mass migration.
The answer is not to build
walls. Western societies need to
build education and innovation
and opportunity. I believe in the
resilience of liberal democracy, in
the little woman in the little booth.
Greece knows that the democratic
idea is stubborn.
Technology has prized the
world open. Nobody — not
Vladimir Putin, not Xi Jinping, not
Trump — can shatter that inter-
connectedness. Nor can anybody
quash forever the human desire to
be free and to live under the only
form of government consistent
with that desire — representative
government installed with the
consent of the people.
Liberalism demands accep-
tance of our human differences
and the ability to mediate them
through democratic institutions.
Dictatorships fear broad challenge
because it may cause them to
buckle. But challenge in democra-
cies is also rebirth.
Respect the intelligence of vot-
ers. Sooner or later they come to
their senses. Churchill was kicked
out of ofice in an election in
1945, just months after defeating
Hitler. Talk about gratitude. He
was re-elected in 1951.
Dignity, sadness in the working class
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times News Service
A
few weeks ago I met a guy
in Kentucky who’d lived
through every trend of dein-
dustrializing America.
He grew up about 65 years ago
on a tobacco and cattle farm, but he
always liked engines, so even while
in high school he
worked 40 hours a
week in a garage.
Then he went to
work in a series of
factories — making
airplane parts, car
seats, sheet metal and casings for
those big air-conditioning fans you
see on the top of buildings.
Every few years as the economy
would shift, or jobs would go to
Mexico, he’d get hit with a layoff.
But the periods of unemployment
were never longer than six months
and he pieced together a career.
He’s in semiretirement now,
but he hasn’t been able to take a
vacation for four years because he
and his wife take care of her elderly
mother, who has trouble swallow-
ing. He’s saved her life 10 times so
far with the Heimlich maneuver,
and they have to be nearby, in case
she needs it again.
His best job came in the middle
of his career, when he was a super-
visor at the sheet metal plant. But
when the technology changed, he
was no longer qualiied to supervise
the new workers, so they let him go.
He thought he’d just come in
quietly on his inal day, clean out his
desk and sneak away.
But word got out, and when he
emerged from his ofice, box in
hand, there was a double line of
guys stretching all the way from his
ofice in back, across the factory
loor and out to his car in the lot. He
walked down that whole double line
with tears lowing, with the guys
clapping and cheering as he went.
Honorable dignity
We hear a lot about angry white
men, but there is an honorable dig-
nity to this guy.
Some of that dignity comes from
the fact that he knows how to ix
things. One of the undermining con-
ditions of the modern factory is that
the workers no longer directly build
the products, they just service the
machines and software that do.
As the sociologist Richard
Sennett once put it, “As a result
of working in this way, the bakers
now no longer actually know how
to bake bread.” But this guy in
Kentucky can take care of himself
— redo the plumbing at home or
replace the brake pads.
He also had a narrative about
his own life. It’s not the agency
narrative you often ind in the
professional segments of society: I
found my passion and steered my
own ship. It’s more of a reactive,
coping narrative: A lot of the big
forces were outside my control, but
I adjusted, made the best of what
was possible within my constraints
and lived up to my responsibilities.
There’s honor to that, too. Still,
over the past many months speaking
with people in these situations, I
can’t help feeling that society is
failing them in some major way, and
not just economically.
There is often a sad, noncumula-
tive pattern to working-class lives.
In some professions as you get
older, you rise to more responsible
positions. And that was true under
the old seniority-based work rules in
factories.
But now there is a stochastic,
episodic nature to many careers. As
workers get older, potential employ-
ers become more suspicious of their
skills, not more conident in them. As
a result, you often meet people who
had been happiest at work in middle
age, and then moved down to a series
of positions they were overqualiied
for and felt diminished in.
Furthermore, I often run across
people who have gone back to
menial work in their 60s and 70s
because they just want to get out of
the house. When you ask them more
questions, you ind that they are
devoted to home and work, but that
they often don’t have rich connec-
tions outside these spheres.
Many of their friends came
through work, but those friendships
tend to fade away when the job
ends. There are older people who
feel unneeded. There are younger
people who feel lost. Somehow
these longing souls never ind each
other.
Suburbia
Suburbia isn’t working. During
the baby boom, the suburbs gave
families safe places to raise their
kids. But now we are in an era
of an aging population, telecom-
muting workers and single-person
households.
The culture and geography of
suburbia are failing to nurture webs
of mutual dependence.
We are animals who can’t
lourish unless we can’t get along
without one another. Yet one inds
too many people thrust into lives of
semi-independence.
These are not the victims of
postindustrial blight I’m talking
about; they are successful people
who worked hard and built good
lives but who are left nonetheless
strangely isolated, in attenuated com-
munities, and who are left radiating
the residual sadness of the lonely
heart.