OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2016
Burning down the house
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
Don’t just batten
the hatches, get
well-prepared
F
ifty-four years isn’t ordinarily considered a notable
anniversary, but the remarkable series of storms late last
week and over the weekend sparked memories of the
history-making 1962 Columbus Day Storm that killed dozens
and damaged tens of thousands of homes.
Though we all can hope the tornado and remnants of a
typhoon combo was a 100-year storm — a once-in-a-century
event — such catastrophes appear to be happening with greater
frequency now than in the past. The start of another winter
is a good time to review some of what we learned from the
Columbus Day Storm, the Great Coastal Gale of 2007 and this
past weekend.
One of the most fundamental lessons was that the coast is
largely on its own during and immediately following a major
disaster. Although inland areas typically aren’t as impacted by
hurricane-strength winds as we are, thousands of downed trees
can block every access highway along which emergency per-
sonnel and supplies would travel. In some storms, these routes
are partially cleared in fairly short order. After a future sub-
duction zone earthquake and tsunami, they will be blocked
far longer and inland areas will be preoccupied with their own
problems.
Coastal agencies and families must plan on getting by for
a protracted period. Three days used to be the recommenda-
tion. It’s now widely recognized this isn’t enough — keeping a
week or 10 days of supplies is desirable — including food, gas-
oline, money and vital prescriptions. This is close to impossi-
ble for many coastal residents, but we all should do our best to
prepare in light of our own inancial wherewithal.
When we know a big storm is coming, it behooves us to ill
our gas tanks, get some cash out of the bank, stock up on easy-
to-prepare foods and drinking water, irewood and cooking
fuel, and make sure we have warm clothes and blankets in case
the power is out for long. Keep extra batteries on hand and
make sure you have some way to recharge cellphones from car
batteries or some other way.
Public agencies and private charities should plan to have to
make up the difference between the essentials that residents
have on hand and what they actually must have following a
disaster. It is a continuing instance of irresponsibility on the
part of Oregon and Washington state governments to not pre-
stage emergency food and medical supplies in vulnerable areas
such as ours.
For more frequent small-scale crises, such as coastal wind
storms and associated power outages, residents have learned to
better monitor weather forecasts and warnings. Residents had
far better warnings about this past weekend’s storm than we
did in 2007. The Doppler radar on the south Washington coast
greatly improved the accuracy and timeliness of these warn-
ings. Additional Next-Generation Radar installations are still
needed in the Paciic Northwest, along with continuing com-
prehensive upgrades. The existing system is close to its oper-
ational lifespan and needs many millions in upgrades and
maintenance.
Each of these epic storms reminds us how much about how
we depend on one another — of the need to check on neigh-
bors and family members to make sure they’re safe and have
what they need to get by. This can lead to creation of com-
munity emergency response teams who do things like check
vacant houses following cold snaps to make sure pipes haven’t
burst. Citizen ham radio operators have placed equipment in
key locations to facilitate emergency communications during
and after a disaster.
Surviving is both an individual responsibility and a social
obligation. Planning for emergencies on the coast has to be an
automatic part of living here.
Last but not least, many thanks to emergency and util-
ity crews for their work and courage. We couldn’t live on this
remarkable coast without you.
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By TIMOTHY EGAN
New York Times News Service
A
wounded bear is a danger-
ous thing. Detested and
defeated, Donald Trump is
now in a tear-the-country-down
rage. Day after
day, he rips at the
last remaining
threads of decency
holding this nation
together. His oppo-
nent is the devil,
he says — hate her with all your
heart. Forget about the rule of law.
Lock her up!
He’s made America vile. He’s
got angel-voiced children yelling
“bitch” and lipping the bird at
rallies. He’s got young athletes
chanting “build a wall” at Latino
kids on the other side. He’s made
it OK to bully and fat-shame. He’s
normalized perversion, bragging
about how an aging man with his
sense of entitlement can walk in on
naked women.
The lesson
Here’s his lesson for young
minds: If you’re rich and boorish
enough, you can get away with
anything. Get away with sexual
assault. Get away with not paying
taxes. Get away with never telling
the truth. Get away lirting with
treason. Get away with stifing peo-
ple who work for you, while you
take yours. Get away with mocking
the disabled, veterans and families
of war heroes.
You know this by now — all the
sordid details. For much of the last
year, the Republican presidential
nominee has been a freak show, an
oh-my-God spectacle. He opens
his mouth, our cellphones blow
up. But now, in the inal days of
a horrid campaign, an unshackled
Trump is more national threat than
punchline. He’s determined to
cause lasting damage.
Is there one sector of society he
has yet to maul? Until this week,
it was the denial wing of his own
party, those “leaders” who looked
the other way while their leader
walked all over the Constitution.
But those who take pleasure
in watching Trump destroy the
Republican Party are missing
the bigger picture. He’s trying
to destroy the country, as well.
Civility, always a tenuous thing,
cannot be quickly restored in a
society that has learned to hate in
public, at full throttle.
Trump has made compassion
suspect. Don’t reach out to starving
refugees — they’re killers in dis-
guise. Don’t give to a charity that
So it has come to this:
The core lessons that bind a
civilized society are in play in
the last days of this election.
won’t reward you in some way.
Don’t pay taxes that build roads and
offer relief to those washed away in
a hurricane. That’s a sucker’s game.
We’re not all in this together. Taxes
are for stupid people.
Every sexual predator now
has a defender at the top of the
Republican ticket. The most
remarkable thing about Sunday’s
debate was Anderson Cooper hav-
ing to school a 70-year-old man on
workplace taboos that most of us
learn on our irst job.
“You described kissing women
without consent, grabbing their
genitals,” Cooper said. “That
is sexual assault. You bragged
that you have sexually assaulted
women. Do you understand that?”
What you heard was the lecture
the human resources director gives
just before saying, “You’re ired.”
Trump could not get hired at the
drive-through window at a Jack in
the Box. Knowing about his history
would make any employer liable. It
took decades to get the workplace to
that point where Trumpian predators
are shunned. Given the biggest
pulpit in the world, Trump is trying
to bring that consensus down.
Locker room
He calls it locker room talk.
The locker room has pushed back,
resoundingly. Let’s call it what
it is — the workplace. And as
Trump told Howard Stern in 2005,
when he bragged about his voyeur
intrusions into backstage beauty
pageants, “I sort of get away with
things like that.” He made a similar
comment — the blueprint for his
actions — in the 2005 television
tape that has blown up in his face.
If he can do it, any creep outside of
the celebrity bubble should be able
to get away with the same thing.
He’s destroyed whatever moral
standing leading Christian conser-
vatives had — starting with Mike
Pence. Their selective piety is not
teachable. Take solace in one of the
small acts of courage breaking out
in recent days: a group of students
at Liberty University telling their
Trump-supporting president, Jerry
Falwell Jr., to practice what the
school preaches.
Trump is “actively promoting
the very things that we Christians
ought to oppose,” the students
wrote. These young people, at
least, are smart enough to see what
Trump is doing to their world.
It will take many people like
those students, and like the irst
lady, Michelle Obama, a model
of decency and class, to repair the
awful damage Trump has done.
In a powerful speech Thursday,
the nation’s most respected public
igure scorned the “hurtful, hate-
ful language” of Trump and its
effect on children: “The shameful
comments about our bodies. The
disrespect of our ambitions and
intellect. The belief that you can do
anything to a woman. It’s cruel. It’s
frightening.”
So it has come to this: The
core lessons that bind a civilized
society are in play in the last days
of this election. We long for family
dinners where Trump no longer
intrudes, for tailgate parties where
football is all that matters, for
normalcy. Remember those days?
They may be gone forever.
It’s not the ‘locker room’ talk.
It’s the ‘Lock her up’ talk.
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
W
ASHINGTON — The
second presidential
debate — bloody, muddy
and raucous — was just enough
to save Donald Trump’s campaign
from extinction, but not enough to
restore his chances
of winning, barring
an act of God (a
medical calamity)
or of Putin (a
cosmically incrimi-
nating WikiLeak).
That Trump crashed because
of a sex-talk tape is odd. It should
have been a surprise to no one.
His views on women have been
on open display for years. And
he’d offered a dazzling array of
other reasons for disqualiication:
habitual mendacity, pathological
narcissism, profound ignorance
and an astonishing dearth of basic
human empathy.
To which list Trump added in
the second debate, and it had noth-
ing to do with sex. It was his threat,
if elected, to put Hillary Clinton in
jail.
After appointing a special pros-
ecutor, of course. The niceties must
be observed. First, a fair trial, then
a proper hanging. The day after the
debate at a rally in Pennsylvania,
Trump responded to chants of
“lock her up,” with “Lock her up
is right.” Two days later, he told a
rally in Lakeland, Florida, “She has
to go to jail.”
Such incendiary talk is an
affront to elementary democratic
decency and a breach of the
boundaries of American political
discourse. In democracies, the
electoral process is a subtle and
elaborate substitute for combat, the
age-old way of settling struggles
for power. But that sublimation
only works if there is mutual agree-
ment to accept both the legitimacy
of the result (which Trump keeps
undermining with charges that the
very process is “rigged”) and the
boundaries of the contest.
The prize for the winner is
temporary accession to limited
political power, not the satisfaction
of vendettas. Vladimir Putin, Hugo
Chavez and a cavalcade of two-bit
caudillos lock up their opponents.
American leaders don’t.
Coming undone
One doesn’t even talk like
this. It takes decades, centuries, to
develop ingrained norms of polit-
ical restraint and self-control. But
they can be undone in short order
by a demagogue feeding a vengeful
populism.
This is not to say that the
investigation into the Clinton
emails was not itself compromised
by politics. FBI director James
Comey’s recommendation not to
pursue charges was both troubling
and puzzling. And Barack Obama
very improperly tilted the scales by
interjecting, while the investigation
was still underway, that Clinton’s
emails had not endangered national
security.
But the answer is not to start
a new process whose outcome
is preordained. Conservatives
have relentlessly, and correctly,
criticized this administration for
abusing its power and suborning
the civil administration (e.g., the
IRS). Is the Republican response to
do the same?
Wasn’t presidential overreach
one of the major charges against
Obama by the anti-establishment
GOP candidates? Wasn’t the ani-
mating spirit of the entire tea party
movement the restoration of consti-
tutional limits and restraints?
In America, we don’t persecute
political opponents. Which is why
we retroactively honor Gerald Ford
for his pardon of Richard Nixon,
for which, at the time, Ford was
widely reviled. It ultimately cost
him the presidency. Nixon might
well have been convicted. But Ford
understood that jailing a president
for actions carried out in the
context of his oficial duties would
threaten the very civil nature of
democratic governance.
What makes Trump’s promise to
lock her up all the more alarming
is that it’s not an isolated incident.
This is not the irst time he’s insin-
uated using the powers of the pres-
idency against political enemies.
He has threatened Amazon’s Jeff
Bezos, owner of The Washington
Post, for using the newspaper “as a
tool for political power against me
and other people. ... We can’t let
him get away with it.”
With exercising free political
speech?
Trump has gone after others
with equal subtlety. “I hear,” he
tweeted, “the Rickets (sic) family,
who own the Chicago Cubs, are
secretly spending $’s against me.
They better be careful, they have a
lot to hide!”
He also promises to “open up”
libel laws to permit easier pros-
ecution of those who attack him
unfairly. Has he ever conceded any
attack on him to be fair?
This election is not just about
placing the nuclear codes in
Trump’s hands. It’s also about
handing him the instruments of
civilian coercion, such as the IRS,
the FBI, the FCC, the SEC. Think
of what he could do to enforce the
“fairness” he demands. Imagine
giving over the vast power of the
modern state to a man who says
in advance that he will punish his
critics and jail his opponent.