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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 25, 2017)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2017 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 Federal authorities are conducting a criminal investigation into the Port of Astoria’s 2005 dredging violations. Of all the problems that beset the Port of Astoria, the dredging viola- tions have the greatest effect on the agency’s pocketbook and the credibil- ity of its executive director and commission. Port Executive Director Peter Gearin said he has been instructed by the Port Commission not to discuss the investigation. But a lawyer familiar with the investigation, who requested anonymity because of legal matters, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Portland are involved in a criminal investigation of the Port, Gearin and commissioners. Port Commissioner Larry Pfund has been doing some investigating, too, and he says he no longer trusts Gearin to tell the truth about the vio- lations that took place two years ago. Phund said he has tried to convince other commissioners to fire Gearin, and they have not given him their support. Now, he is going public with what he knows. It’s been a long and bumpy road for the “Safeway intersec- tion” traffic light since it was first proposed in 2003, nearly a year before the new supermarket opened for business. There were financing issues, then construction problems and delays, followed by more financing issues, then disagree- ments about exactly where the light should be located and even doubts about whether it should be installed after all. Along the way the traffic light’s original $200,000 price tag ballooned to $311,000. But somehow the project survived all the setbacks. Now city officials expect it to be operational within the next week or two. 50 years ago — 1966 U.S. Rep. Wendell Wyatt, R–Ore., introduced legislation today to include U.S. Highway 30 between Portland and Astoria in the national highway system so it can be eligible for federal funds. Wyatt said the federal funds would be used for widening and improv- ing the highway — “a virtual immediate necessity” because of area growth. As the final Job Corpsmen leave Tongue Point, just a bare two years from the date of establishment of this institution, many people are still wondering why the Office of Economic Opportunity wiped it out. Many people also continue to be appalled at this example of the casual attitude of a federal agency toward the taxpay- er’s money. A bill to forbid commercial fishing for steelhead appeared in the House of Representatives at Salem Monday, introduced by Rep. Edward W. Elder, Eugene Republican and fish and game committee chairman. 75 years ago — 1941 The Daily Astorian/File Photo Shown above is a replica of the pledge which every American was asked to sign during a house-to-house campaign in every part of Oregon in 1941. The U.S. Army has closed the north Clatsop beaches to pedestrian and vehicular traffic, from the south jetty to the Necanicum River but leaving Seaside’s beach open, it was learned today. There are certain restricted areas within the Seaside beach but they are minor and patrolled. The beach in the described areas are considered outposts of the subsector command and as such are banned to civilian use. A defense saving pledge card program will start tomor- row in Clatsop County in which every income earner in the county will be asked to sign a card pledging purchase of a defi- nite weekly or monthly amount in defense savings bonds and stamps, according to William F. McGregor, county defense sav- ings chairman. The program is part of a nationwide effort to have every income earner in the nation pledge purchase of defense savings bonds and stamps in an effort to help finance the huge cost of the war, promote private savings and defeat inflation. Brigadier-General Thomas Rilea of Fort Lewis told the Astorian- Budget by telephone last night that the Army has issued no orders closing Oregon beaches to the public, as it was announced in a report Monday. An authorized spokesman from Lewis said last night: “The Army has issued no orders closing Oregon beaches to the public as has been reported in the press. Unauthorized persons are not permitted in the immediate vicinity of military installations wherever located. Otherwise the move- ments of civilians are not restricted.” Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian A man watches as marchers begin to walk during the Women’s March Saturday in Astoria. After the Women’s March By DAVID BROOKS New York Times News Service T he women’s marches were a phenomenal success and an important cultural moment. Most everybody came back uplifted and empowered. Many said they felt hopeful for the first time since Election Day. But these marches can never be an effective opposition to Donald Trump. In the first place, this movement focuses on the wrong issues. Of course, many marchers came with broad anti-Trump agendas, but they were marching under the conventional structure in which the central issues were clear. As The Washington Post reported, they were “reproductive rights, equal pay, affordable health care, action on climate change.” These are all important matters, and they tend to be voting issues for many upper-middle-class voters in university towns and coastal cities. But this is 2017. Ethnic populism is rising around the world. The crucial problems today concern the way technology and globalization are decimating jobs and tearing the social fabric; the way migration is redefining nation-states; the way the post-World War II order is increas- ingly being rejected as a means to keep the peace. All the big things that were once taken for granted are now under assault: globalization, capitalism, adherence to the Constitution, the U.S.-led global order. If you’re not engaging these issues first, you’re not going to be in the main arena of national life. Second, there was too big a gap between Saturday’s marches and the Democratic and Republican parties. Sometimes social change hap- pens through grass-roots movements — the civil rights movement. But most of the time change happens through political parties: The New Deal, the Great Society, the Reagan Revolution. Change happens when people run for office, amass coali- tions of interest groups, engage in the messy practice of politics. Without the discipline of party politics, social movements devolve into mere feeling, especially in our age of expressive individualism. People march and feel good and think they have accomplished something. They have a social experience with a lot of people and fool themselves into thinking they are members of a coherent and demanding community. Such movements descend to the language of mass therapy. It’s significant that as marching and movements have risen, the actual power of the parties has collapsed. Marching is a seductive substitute for action in an anti-politi- cal era, and leaves the field open for Change happens when people run for office, amass coalitions of interest groups, engage in the messy practice of politics. a rogue like Trump. Finally, identity politics is too small for this moment. On Friday, Trump offered a version of unabashed populist nationalism. On Saturday, the anti-Trump forces could have offered a red, white and blue alternative patriotism, a modern, forward-looking patriotism based on pluralism, dynamism, growth, racial and gender equality and global engagement. Instead, the marches offered the pink hats, an anti-Trump move- ment built, oddly, around Planned Parenthood, and lots of signs with the word “pussy” in them. The defi- nition of America is up for grabs. Our fundamental institutions have been exposed as shockingly hollow. But the marches couldn’t escape the language and tropes of identity politics. Soon after the Trump victory, professor Mark Lilla of Columbia wrote a piece on how identity politics was dooming progressive chances. Times readers loved that piece and it vaulted to the top of the most-read charts. But now progressives seem intent on doubling down on exactly what has doomed them so often. Lilla pointed out that identity politics isolates progressives from the wider country: “The fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissisti- cally unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indif- ferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.” Sure enough, if you live in blue America, the marches carpeted your Facebook feed. But The Times’ Julie Bosman was in Niles, Michigan, where many women had never heard of the marches, and if they had, I suspect, they would not have felt at home at one. Identity-based political move- ments always seem to descend into internal rivalries about who is most oppressed and who should get pride of place. Sure enough, the controversy before and after the march was over the various roles of white feminists, women of color, anti-abortion feminists and various other out-groups. The biggest problem with identity politics is that its categories don’t explain what is going on now. Trump carried a majority of white women. He won the votes of a shocking number of Hispanics. The central challenge today is not how to celebrate difference. The central threat is not the patriarchy. The central challenge is to rebind a functioning polity and to modernize a binding American idea. I loathed Trump’s inaugural: It offered a zero-sum, ethnically pure, backward-looking brutalistic nationalism. But it was a coherent vision, and he is rallying a true and fervent love of our home. If the anti-Trump forces are to have a chance, they have to offer a better nationalism, with diversity cohering around a central mission, building a nation that balances the dynamism of capitalism with bibli- cal morality. The march didn’t come close. Hint: The musical “Hamilton” is a lot closer.
