OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 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
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2006
North Coast residents hunkered down over the weekend as torrential
rain and blustery south winds battered the area.
Rainfall set a record in Astoria Sunday as 2.8 inches deluged the city,
eclipsing the previous 2.14-inch record set in 1988 and dwarfing the half-
inch that normally falls on Nov. 5.
The long-awaited Safeway intersection traffic light at 33rd
Street and Lief Erikson Drive should be up and running by early
February.
At Monday’s meeting, the Astoria City Council voted unan-
imously to authorize a $109,121 charge order to the contractor,
CivilWorks NW to complete the project, which had been stalled
since November 2005. That’s when it was determined that
deeper and considerably more expensive foundations than origi-
nally planned would be required for the poles and arms that will
hold up the signal lights.
The campaign to fund a new Clatsop Community College campus with
a $25 million bond request met crushing defeat Tuesday.
About 39 percent of voters, or 5,631, were in favor, while 61 percent –
8,845 – were against it.
Late Tuesday night, college officials had pretty much accepted defeat.
Astoria voters rallied behind Willis Van Dusen Tuesday,
handing the four-term mayor another four years at the helm –
but with only 52.78 percent of the vote.
Clatsop Community College’s failure to secure a $25 million bond issue
in this week’s general election does not mean plans for a new campus are
dead in the water.
The school still has time to make its case before the Legislature and
hang on to government support.
50 years ago — 1966
Let’s not do this again
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times News Service
I
f I had to sum up the election of
2016 in one clause, I would say
it has been a sociological revo-
lution, a moral warning and a politi-
cal summons.
Sociologically, this campaign
has been an education in how soci-
eties come apart.
The Trump cam-
paign has been like
a flash flood that
sweeps away the
topsoil and both
reveals and wid-
ens the chasms, crevices and cracks
below.
We are a far more divided soci-
ety than we realized. The edu-
cated and less educated increasingly
see the world and vote in differ-
ent ways. So do men and women,
blacks and whites, natives and
immigrants, young and old, urban
and rural.
We like to think of democracy
as a battle of ideas and a process
of individual deliberation, but this
year demography has been destiny.
The campaigns have pushed us back
into our tribal bunkers. Americans
now seem more clannish, and more
incomprehensible to one another.
Social uprising
Little did Anatoly Kusmov, Vladivostock, Soviet Union, think he
would celebrate his 28th birthday in the United States. But that is
just what happened Saturday afternoon at St. Mary hospital, where
the young Russian is hospitalized for several weeks with a broken
leg, suffered on one of the Russian fishing vessels offshore. The
Misses Colleen Timmerman, left, and Evelyn Timmerman baked
a birthday cake. Kuzmov wanted a sweater to send to his wife,
and Mrs Evelyn Lazarus of Morton’s Dress Shop “made up the
difference” from donations by nurses and other hospital workers
to present him one. The hospital Sisters set up a birthday table
where coffee was served with the cakes, and a patient, Mrs. William
Bradshaw, sent a bouquet of pink carnations for the occasion.
The ferry Tourist 3 sailed from Astoria to Tacoma under its own power
this week.
The 35-year-old ferry boat was prepared for sea at Astoria Marine Con-
struction company, where it was braced to fit insurance specifications for a
sea voyage.
The ferry Kitsap, also sold by the Oregon Highway commission some
time ago to an Alaska owner, has been reported sunk while being towed to
a point on the Aleutian island chain.
Optimism shone among local merchants and townspeople,
our neighbors along the north shore peninsula and residents of
the coastal town of Seaside in response to queries on effects of the
new Astoria bridge.
Astoria is faring well commercially due to the new span. Sea-
side and Washington communities had a great impact of tourist
trade in the first month following opening, but find this slack-
ing off, tapering down to normal winter volume. Bridge is being
used by residents on both sides of the river for social life, week-
end drives and business trips.
75 years ago — 1941
Astoria took a breather Tuesday from the present rush of mad events
which has the world in crazy turmoil to observe the signing of the armistice
which 23 years ago ended the war to end all wars.
It wasn’t the usual Armistice Day celebration, however, with all thought
reverting to that day when Germany finally capitulated to the Allies. Asto-
rian, as they watched the parade, a grimly realistic military procession, were
looking ahead – and wondering.
In the wake of the fall season’s worst storm, 200 peeler logs
today were reported cast on Long Beach peninsula, and several
hundred thousand feet of lumber drifted in the moderating seas
off the Oregon and Washington coasts.
The logs were lost by the Hoquiam tug Klihyam which was
towing a sea-going barge from Garibaldi to Aberdeen.
This year a legitimate social
uprising has been twisted to serve
destructive means. During the past
50 years, most of us have bene-
fited from feminism, the civil rights
movement, mass immigration, the
information age and the sexual revo-
lution. But as Charles Murray points
out, one class has been buffeted by
each of these trends: white workers.
The white working class once
sat comfortably at the core of the
American idea, but now its mem-
bers have seen their skills devalued,
their neighborhoods transformed,
their masculinity delegitimized,
their family structures decimated,
their dignity erased and their basic
decency questioned. Marginalized,
they commonly feel invisible, alien-
ated and culturally pessimistic. This
year the workers overthrew their
corporate masters and grabbed con-
trol of the Republican Party.
That would be progress and even
inspiring, but — maybe because of
the candidate who is leading it —
the working-class revolt has been
laced with bigotry, anti-Semitism,
class hatred, misogyny and author-
itarianism that has further rent the
American fabric.
Our partisan divides now men-
acingly overlap with our racial and
class divides, threatening to form a
trinity of discord with horrendous
consequences.
Moral health
The moral health of the polity is
in even scarier shape. Any decent
society rests on codes of etiquette
and a shared moral ecology to make
cooperation possible, to prevent
economic and political life from
descending into a savage war of all
against all.
The
underlying
social
and moral
foundations
of the nation
have been
weakened.
Today a rancid
chapter ends.
Tomorrow let’s
start with fresh
ground and a
new party.
But this year Donald Trump
has decimated the codes of basic
decency without paying a price.
With his constant, flagrant and
unapologetic lying, he has shred-
ded the standards of intellectual vir-
tue — the normal respect for facts
and truth that makes conversation
possible. With his penchant for cru-
elty, bigotry, narcissism, selfishness
and even his primitive primate dom-
inance displays, he has shredded the
accepted understandings of personal
morality that prevent the strong
from preying on the weak.
Most disturbing, all this has been
greeted with moral numbness. The
truest thing Trump said all year is
that he could shoot someone on
Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.
We learned this year that millions of
Americans are incapable of being
morally offended, or of putting vir-
tue above partisanship.
Watershed
And that brings us to the sum-
mons. The events of 2016 represent
a watershed and a call to do politics
differently.
Personally I’ve always disdained
talk of a third party, mostly because
the structural barriers against such
parties are so high, no matter how
scintillatingly attractive they seem
in theory. But it’s becoming clear
that the need for a third party out-
weighs even the very real barriers.
The Republican Party will prob-
ably remain the white working-class
party, favoring closed trade, closed
borders and American withdrawal
abroad. The Democratic Party,
meanwhile, is increasingly dom-
inated by its left/Sanders wing,
which offers its own populism of
the left.
There has to be a party for those
who are now homeless. There has
to be a party as confidently opposed
to populism as populists are in favor
of it.
There has to be a compassionate
globalist party, one that embraces
free trade while looking after
those who suffer from trade; that
embraces continued skilled immi-
gration while listening to those hurt
by immigration; that embraces wid-
ening ethnic diversity while under-
standing that diversity can weaken
social trust.
There has to be a patriotic party
that understands that the world ben-
efits when America serves as the
leading and energetic superpower.
There has to be a party that
unapologetically emphasizes pub-
lic character formation. It’s not clear
that our political culture is produc-
ing individuals capable of exercis-
ing freedom wisely. But citizen-
ship is a skill that can be nurtured
— by a party that insists on basic
standards of decency in its candi-
dates; that practices politics in hum-
ble, honest ways; that strengthens
trust and institutions by playing by
the rules, by confirming appointees
and the like.
The problems go deeper than the
jobless rate and the threat of ISIS.
The underlying social and moral
foundations of the nation have been
weakened. Today a rancid chapter
ends. Tomorrow let’s start with fresh
ground and a new party.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Don’t ‘door’ them
ast evening I almost met some-
one who was opening their door
across the bike lane, by almost hit-
ting the open door.
Here is a new habit to form, and
repeat every time you open your car
door: Use the hand farthest from
the door, on the opposite side of
your body from the door you will be
opening. That way you have twisted
around, and can see behind you,
so you will see who may be com-
ing up behind you, before opening
the door.
It is somewhat like you do when
in reverse gear, as you back up —
looking back, to not hit things with
the back of your car. Be mindful
of the person passing you, to not
“door” them.
Thank you, in advance.
ROBERT CLARK
Astoria
L
A dying art
rt is how to communicate emo-
tion, and is what separates
humans from the rest of the world.
A
Art is knowledge, art is passion,
and art is, most of all, humanity.
The importance of painting, music,
poetry, sculpture and the many
other forms of art cannot be over-
stated, and yet our children remain
deprived.
Schools have been losing more
and more funding, and in response
have been cutting art programs
more than almost any other pro-
gram in the country. This is why
music programs have been cut
more than 80 percent in the last
eight years. This would be an atroc-
ity to exist in any developed coun-
try, let alone the wealthiest in all the
world.
However, the problem may not
completely lie within the schools
themselves. Schools need money,
that’s plain and simple, but with the
massive cuts going to schools, and
how severely teachers are under-
paid, it’s become obvious that
schools are not receiving the money
they need to flourish. The complete
lack of funding from the state is to
blame for the absence of art in our
schools for our youth. Without the
funding, the teaching simply can-
not happen.
Why is it, then, that Oregon of
all places, home to some of the
most prestigious arts colleges in
America, is also home to a severe
underfunding of the arts in our mid-
dle and high schools? The mis-
take is inexcusable, and must be
addressed immediately not just by
the voting community, but by the
politicians themselves.
That is why I propose that
it should be a necessity to have
schools fund and engage in the
arts throughout America, and espe-
cially throughout Oregon. I, a fresh-
man in high school, have bene-
fited greatly in ways I couldn’t
have even imagined from expo-
sure to the arts — everything from
a newly gained perspective on life,
to the power to express my opinion
in new and more influential ways,
to even a new passion. Art is essen-
tial to humanity, and to strip chil-
dren of art is to strip children from
humanity.
BRANDON MOLONEY
Vernonia