OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 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
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2006
About 150 Clatsop County electricity customers remained without
power this morning, the last of thousands of homes and businesses left in
the dark by Thursday’s powerful windstorm.
The storm, bringing gusts that topped 100 mph, knocked out power to
the entire county as trees toppled onto power lines throughout the area.
A major frustration for county residents during last week’s
windstorm and power outages was the loss of radio sta-
tion KAST, which went off the air Thursday afternoon and
remained silent for two days.
A neglected generator — bought for the radio station by
Clatsop County — has been pinpointed as the source of the
problem.
But who’s to blame for the situation has embroiled county
officials in angry debate, including a heated exchange between
Sheriff Tom Bergin and the Clatsop County commissioners
Monday night.
The back-up generator intended to power the station during
electricity outages failed to start, and required several hours of
work by a county mechanic to get up and running. Even then,
the signal from the station was so weak it could not be picked
up more than a short distance away.
Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Bergin, under fire from some quarters
over his handling of the county’s response during last week’s wind storm,
said he stands by his decision that the event and its aftermath didn’t
require the use of his department’s emergency operations facility.
50 years ago — 1966
Astoria merchants and their
enlarged staffs moved today into
the final week of what they believe
will be the best Christmas shop-
ping season in the community’s
history.
Stores will be open all day and
all evening through Thursday.
Stores will close at regular times
Saturday afternoon, Christmas
Eve.
Most downtown retail dealers
queried by The Daily Astorian in
the past few days have reported
Christmas business volume up
File Photo
from a year ago — some say as This concrete slab, weigh-
much as 20 percent up.
ing 7 tons, is the first of 27
Possibility that the U.S. Maritime
Administration will close the Astoria
reserve fleet some time in 1968 was
disclosed by J.W. Gulick, acting admin-
istrator, in a letter to U.S. Sen. Wayne
Morse recently.
that will provide the exterior
facing of the new Astoria Li-
brary. They will be fastened to
steel framework of the build-
ing with metal clip angles.
Windows will be installed in
spaces between slabs.
The City Council may attempt to annex the Youngs Bay
shore area from the old to the new highway bridges across
Youngs Bay by voluntary agreement of property owners
involved.
The council Monday night heard Ray Wood of the Jay-
cees report that he has been unable to obtain agreement of all
Youngs Bay shore people to annexation to the city.
75 years ago — 1941
It need occasion no surprise that enemy submarines are operating
within 20 miles of the nation’s Pacific coastline as revealed by the tor-
pedoing of one tanker and the shelling of two others offshore from Cal-
ifornia Saturday. Such a development of the war was to be expected and
unquestionably has been expected by the Navy and Army.
Japan has a good many long-range submarines and logically might
be expected to send some of them to prey on our coastal and intercoastal
shipping, not alone for the damage done to it but to keep some of our
forces occupied on this side of the Pacific. The actual happening brings
the war close to home and should be convincing to those prone to scoff at
the fear of attacks on the country.
More than 57,000 items of first class mail raced through the
cancellation machine at the Astoria post office Monday in the
biggest day of business in the post office since 1849, when it was
established.
In the previous biggest day in December 1940, the automatic
cancellation marker checked off 47,800 pieces of first class mail.
Stamp sales Saturday exceeded $1,000 with $850 sold at
the regular stamp window, and the balance at the parcel post
window.
Ross McIntyre of Portland, representing the Governor’s Office, met
with representatives of the Clatsop defense council in the City Council
chambers today, to discuss general plans for partial, complete and tempo-
rary evacuation of communities in the area.
The meeting was called for long-range planning and was not related to
any immediate or specific emergency.
Mr. and Mrs. Pete Holstrom said this week they had received
word from their son Edward that he was safe and well, unin-
jured by the Japanese attack on Honolulu. Edward Holstrom
is in the Army, stationed at Schofield Barracks, Honolulu, and
was there when the Nipponese planes roared their destruction
on the American Pacific island.
Useful idiots galore
in hacking tale
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
A
n editorial in The Times
described Donald Trump
as a “useful idiot” serving
Russian interests. That may not be
exactly right. After
all, useful idiots
are supposed to be
unaware of how
they’re being used,
but Trump prob-
ably knows very
well how much he owes to Vlad-
imir Putin. Remember, he once
openly appealed to the Russians to
hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Still, the general picture of a
president-elect who owes his posi-
tion in part to intervention by a
foreign power, and shows every
sign of being prepared to use U.S.
policy to reward that power, is
accurate.
But let’s be honest: Trump is by
no means the only useful idiot in
this story. As recent reporting by
The Times makes clear, bad guys
couldn’t have hacked the U.S. elec-
tion without a lot of help, both
from U.S. politicians and from the
news media.
Let me explain what I mean
by saying that bad guys hacked
the election. I’m not talking about
some kind of wild conspiracy the-
ory. I’m talking about the obvious
effect of two factors on voting: the
steady drumbeat of Russia-con-
trived leaks about Democrats, and
only Democrats, and the dramatic,
totally unjustified last-minute inter-
vention by the FBI, which appears
to have become a highly partisan
institution, with distinct alt-right
sympathies.
Does anyone really doubt that
these factors moved swing-state
ballots by at least 1 percent? If
they did, they made the difference
in Michigan, Wisconsin and Penn-
sylvania — and therefore handed
Trump the election, even though
he received almost 3 million fewer
total votes. Yes, the election was
hacked.
By the way, people who
respond to this observation by
talking about mistakes in Clinton
campaign strategy are missing the
point, and continuing their useful
idiocy. All campaigns make mis-
takes. Since when do these mis-
takes excuse subversion of an
election by a foreign power and a
rogue domestic law enforcement
agency?
Why it worked
So why did the subversion
work?
It’s important to realize that the
postelection CIA declaration that
Russia had intervened on behalf of
the Trump campaign was a confir-
mation, not a revelation (although
we’ve now learned that Putin was
personally involved in the effort).
The pro-Putin tilt of Trump and
his advisers was obvious months
before the election — I wrote about
it in July. By midsummer the close
relationship between WikiLeaks
and Russian intelligence was also
obvious, as was the site’s growing
alignment with white nationalists.
Did Republican politicians, so
big on flag waving and impugn-
ing their rivals’ patriotism, reject
this foreign aid to their cause? No,
they didn’t. In fact, as far as I can
tell, no major Republican figure
was even willing to criticize Trump
Toru Hanai/Pool Photo
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen in Nagato, western Japan,
Thursday. The Obama administration suggested that Putin personal-
ly authorized the hacking of Democratic officials’ email accounts in
the run-up to the presidential election, which intelligence agencies
believe was designed to help Donald Trump prevail. The White House
also leveled an astounding attack on Trump himself, saying he must
have known of Russia’s interference.
Joel Ryan/Invision
The head of the wax figure of President-elect Donald Trump is worked
on by coloring supervisor, Verity Talbot, at a studio in west London
in December.
It might be more comfortable to
pretend that things are OK, that
American democracy isn’t on the
edge. But that would be taking
useful idiocy to the next level.
when he directly asked Russia to
hack Clinton.
This shouldn’t come as a sur-
prise. It has long been obvious —
except, apparently, to the news
media — that the modern GOP is
a radical institution that is ready
to violate democratic norms in
the pursuit of power. Why should
the norm of not accepting foreign
assistance be any different?
News media
The bigger surprise was the
behavior of the news media, and I
don’t mean fake news; I mean big,
prestigious organizations. Leaked
emails, which everyone knew were
probably the product of Russian
hacking, were breathlessly reported
as shocking revelations, even when
they mostly revealed nothing more
than the fact that Democrats are
people.
Meanwhile, the news media
dutifully played up the Clinton
server story, which never involved
any evidence of wrongdoing, but
merged in the public mind into the
perception of a vast “email” scan-
dal when there was nothing there.
And then there was the Comey
letter. The FBI literally found noth-
ing at all. But the letter dominated
front pages and TV coverage, and
that coverage — by news organi-
zations that surely knew that they
were being used as political weap-
ons — was almost certainly deci-
sive on Election Day.
So as I said, there were a lot
of useful idiots this year, and they
made the election hack a success.
Now what? If we’re going to
have any hope of redemption, peo-
ple will have to stop letting them-
selves be used the way they were
in 2016. And the first step is to
admit the awful reality of what just
happened.
That means not trying to change
the subject to campaign strategy,
which is a legitimate topic but has
no bearing on the question of elec-
toral subversion. It means not mak-
ing excuses for news coverage that
empowered that subversion.
And it means not acting as if
this was a normal election whose
result gives the winner any kind
of a mandate, or indeed any legit-
imacy beyond the bare legal
requirements. It might be more
comfortable to pretend that things
are OK, that American democracy
isn’t on the edge. But that would
be taking useful idiocy to the next
level.