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. Letters referring to news
stories should also mention the
headline and date of publication.
The Daily Astorian welcomes
short “in gratitude” notes from
readers for publication. They
should keep to a 200-word maxi-
mum and writers are asked to avoid
simply listing event sponsors. They
must be signed, include the writ-
er’s address, phone number and are
subject to condensation and editing
for style, grammar, etc.
Submissions may be sent in any
of these ways:
E-mail to editor@dailyastorian.
com;
Online form at www.dailyasto-
rian.com;
Delivered to the Astorian offices
at 949 Exchange St. and 1555 N.
Roosevelt in Seaside.
Or by mail to Letters to the
Editor, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR
97103