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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 13, 2017)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 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 OUR VIEW Gov. Brown puts political correctness above rural jobs I n an astoundingly ignorant and heavy-handed display of putting urban political correctness ahead of rural jobs, Gov. Kate Brown last week dictated that the citizen members of the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission reverse their January decision that gave commercial fishermen a minimally fair share of the Columbia River’s salmon allocation. Addressing commissioners as if they are misbehaving children, Brown told Chairman Michael Finley the commission majority’s acknowledgment of reality is “not acceptable” and that “I expect” the commission to acquiesce to her interpretation of the facts by April 3. The commission agreed at a meeting on Friday in Tigard to take up the issue in March. Many of the most important facts are not in dispute: Former Gov. John Kitzhaber’s dictated abandonment of decades of care- fully nuanced salmon policy has not worked. Kicking commer- cial fishermen off the Columbia’s main stem as of Dec. 31, 2016, as Kitzhaber’s plan called for, is manifestly unjust and will hurt the economy of Clatsop County and other fishing-dependent communities. Fish and Wildlife Commission members are in an infinitely bet- ter position to judge the ineffectiveness of salmon policies than is the governor. They know that alternatives such as seine nets oper- ated from boats and the shore have been a clear disappointment. Off-channel locations where nets might be deployed to catch only hatchery fish are in short supply. State legislators and agencies have failed to keep financial promises to fishing families. The commission’s former chairman was enthusiastic in applauding the January vote to back away from a rigid deadline to transition gillnets off the river. Salmon gillnets, in modern usage, are not the “walls of death” railed against by the governor’s urban friends, but are instead carefully crafted to catch a strictly limited number of hatchery salmon. Time, area and gear restrictions — including live recovery boxes for any accidentally caught naturally spawning salmon — limit impacts on wild fish. In truth, the anti-gillnetting drive has never been about conser- vation, but about salving tender Portland sensitivities while deliv- ering more salmon to recreational fishermen, especially those affil- iated with the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, which owes its existence to fat-cat Texas oilmen. Brown’s interference in this matter is a prime example of why some Democrats now struggle to connect with working people. Yes, all Oregonians want recreational fishing to prosper. But by rejecting any compromise on behalf of hardworking commercial fishermen, Brown places herself solidly against jobs for struggling rural voters. We all should remember that come Election Day. Worrisome news from Fukushima D epending on what news media you read, the latest radiation readings at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant are frightening, or still manageable and only a big problem in the vicinity of the plant. Both points of view are understandable. You know radiation levels are intense when they will “kill” a robot in less than two hours. All this is scary, but the insides of failed reactor vessels are bound to be highly toxic. The news isn’t so much that radiation lev- els have increased — they probably have been sky-high ever since the 2011 earthquake-related disaster. The real significance of the news appears to be that responders now are managing to get closer to the melted cores, an essential step along the way to ensuring they remain safely cooped up. Fukushima’s melted cores are believed to still be pooled within reactor containment vessels. There is no doubt the cleanup remains a nearly unimaginably expensive and complex task. It currently is expected to cost $188 billion and take until around the year 2060. If U.S. experiences at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are any guide, eventual costs and time are likely to be far higher. Any Fukushima news ratchets up concerns on the U.S. West Coast about how contaminated ocean water might impact marine life, shellfish and human health on this side of the Pacific. For now, such concerns remain unwarranted. However, we clearly must closely monitor the situation. A proven failure of the containment vessels would mark the start of a much bigger emergency, but there is no current reason to think such a catastrophe is imminent. All this must continue to inform our own national decisions about nuclear power. It remains an intriguing option for generat- ing electricity without producing greenhouse gases. But anything resembling the reactor designs at Fukushima ought to be off limits forever. A gift for Trump By DAVID BROOKS New York Times News Service I f you could give Donald Trump the gift of a single trait to help his presidency, what would it be? My first thought was that pru- dence was the most important gift one could give him. Prudence is the ability to govern oneself with the use of reason. It is the ability to suppress one’s impulses for the sake of long-term goals. It is the ability to see the specific circum- stances in which you are placed, and to master the art of navigating within them. My basic thought was that a pru- dent President Trump wouldn’t spend his mornings angrily tweet- ing out his resentments. A prudent Trump wouldn’t spend his after- noons barking at foreign leaders and risking nuclear war. “Prudence is what differentiates action from impulse and heroes from hotheads,” writes the French philosopher André Comte-Sponville. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized prudence might not be the most important trait Trump needs. He seems intent on destroying the postwar world order — building walls, offending allies and driving away the stranger and the refugee. Do I really want to make him more prudent and effec- tive in pursuit of malicious goals? Moreover, the true Trump dys- function seems deeper. We are used to treating politicians as vehicles for political philosophies and inter- est groups. But in Trump’s case, his philosophy, populism, often takes a back seat to his psychological com- plexes — the psychic wounds that seem to induce him into a state of perpetual war with enemies far and wide. With Trump we are relent- lessly thrown into the Big Shaggy, that unconscious underground of wounds, longings and needs that drive him to do what he does, to tweet what he does, to attack whom he does. Thinking about politics in the age of Trump means relying less on the knowledge of political science and more on the probings of D.H. Law- rence, David Foster Wallace and Carl Jung. At the heart of Trumpism is the perception that the world is a dark, savage place, and therefore ruth- lessness, selfishness and callous- ness are required to survive in it. It is the utter conviction, as Trump put it, that murder rates are at a 47-year high, even though in fact they are close to a 57-year low. It is the utter conviction that we are engaged in an apocalyptic war against radical AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe walk from the stage at the conclusion of a joint new conference in the East Room of the White House on Friday. Islamic terrorism, even though there are probably several foreign policy problems of greater importance. It’s not clear if Trump is com- bative because he sees the world as dangerous or if he sees the world as dangerous because it justifies his combativeness. Either way, Trump- ism is a posture that leads to the now familiar cycle of threat per- ception, insult, enemy-making, aggrievement, self-pity, assault and counterassault. He doesn’t have to begin each day making enemies: Nordstrom, John McCain, judges. He could begin each day looking for friends, and he would actually get a lot more done. So, upon reflection, the gift I would give Trump would be an emo- tional gift, the gift of fraternity. I’d give him the gift of some crisis he absolutely could not handle on his own. The only way to survive would be to fall back entirely on others, and then to experience what it feels like to have them hold him up. Out of that, I hope, would come an ability to depend on others, to trust other people, to receive grace, and eventually a desire for compan- ionship. Fraternity is the desire to make friends during both good and hostile occasions and to be faithful to those friends. The fraternal per- son is seeking harmony and fair play between individuals. He is trying to move the world from tension to harmony. Donald Trump didn’t have to have an administration that was at war with everyone but its base. He came to office with a populist man- date that cut across partisan catego- ries. He could have created unorth- odox coalitions and led unexpected alliances that would have broken the logjam of our politics. He didn’t have to have a vicious infighting administration in which everybody leaks against one another and in which backstairs life is a war of all against all. He doesn’t have to begin each day making enemies: Nordstrom, John McCain, judges. He could begin each day looking for friends, and he would actually get a lot more done. On Inauguration Day, when Trump left his wife in the dust so he could greet the Obamas, I didn’t realize how quickly having a dis- courteous leader would erode the conversation. But look at how many of any day’s news stories are built around enmity. The war over who can speak in the Senate. Kellyanne Conway’s cable TV battle du jour. Half my Facebook feed is someone linking to a video with the headline: Watch X demolish Y. I doubt that Trump will develop a capacity for fraternity any time soon, but to be human is to hold out hope, and to believe that even a guy as old and self-destructive as Trump is still 0.001 percent open to a transforma- tion of the heart. LETTERS WELCOME Letters should be exclusive to The Daily Astorian. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters. Letters should be fewer than 350 words and must include the writer’s name, address and phone numbers. You will be contacted to confirm authorship. All letters are subject to editing for space, grammar and, on occa- sion, factual accuracy and verbal verification of authorship. Only two letters per writer are printed each month. Letters written in response to other letter writers should address the issue at hand and, rather than mentioning the writer by name, should refer to the headline and date the letter was published. Dis- course should be civil and people should be referred to in a respectful manner. 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