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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (June 30, 2017)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 2017 Founded in 1873 DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager OUR VIEW E ach week we recognize those people and organizations in the community deserving of public praise for the good things they do to make the North Coast a better place to live, and also those who should be called out for their actions. SHOUTOUTS This week’s Shoutouts go to: • Georgia-Pacific’s Wauna Mill, which donated $20,000 toward a large playground at a park and boat launch on 27 acres of land in Westport that the mill gave to the county several years ago. At the time, the land was valued at $230,000. The coun- ty’s planned site upgrades are expected to take more than a year to complete, and will also include a picnic area, restrooms and a refurbished boat launch. The entire project is estimated to cost $900,000. • Organizers within the Cannon Beach Gallery Group of the ninth annual Plein Air & More arts festival last weekend which drew thousands to the area. More than 30 artists from across the Northwest created art on location throughout Cannon Beach and at 10 participating galleries while interacting with onlookers as they worked. The artists created in different paint mediums along with other art forms including metalworking, printmaking, woodworking, stone carving, bronze sculpture, jewelry making and fused or blown glass. Submitted Photo Megan Schacher, right, was chosen Miss Scandinavia and Miss Finland at the Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer Festival. • Megan Schacher, who was crowned Miss Scandinavia and Miss Finland at the recent Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer Festival. The festival is an annual celebration of the area’s deep Scandinavian heritage, and Schacher isn’t the first in her family to wear both crowns. Both her sister and mother were prior win- ners of each. • Doug Deur, an Arch Cape native and resident who was recently named the North Coast’s representative on the Oregon Parks and Recreation Commission. Deur is replacing Robin Risley on the commission after she reached her eight-year term limit. Deur grew up on the North Coast and has spent much of his career studying national state parks history and the North Coast’s cultural heritage as an associate research professor at Portland State University. • Cannon Beach City Manager Brant Kucera, whose last day on the job was today prior to moving to Sisters in Deschutes County to become its new city manager. Kucera served in Cannon Beach since 2014, and during his tenure he helped the city adopt its first strategic plan, and he worked to pri- oritize and address housing, infrastructure and emergency ser- vices needs. The city is conducting a national search for his replacement. CALLOUTS This week’s Callouts go to: • The annual “gathering” of The Rainbow Family of Living Light, which is underway in Grant County and expected to grow to 20,000 people who are camping, cooking and living on pub- lic land in the Malheur National Forest through the Fourth of July. The Rainbow Family is a loose-knit group of people with- out leadership or organization who participate in an annual national gathering. Attendees come from across the country and since 1972 the countercultural event has taken place at a dif- ferent national forest each year. U.S. Forest Service leaders say attendees often strain local resources, particularly in a remote area where there isn’t the infrastructure to deal with large groups and the camping is primitive. Past gatherings have included drug arrests and run-ins with police. It simply isn’t possible for a group of that size, without adequate infrastructure, to leave the land undamaged. Suggestions? Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know about? Let us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make sure to take a look. Trump’s Obama obsession By CHARLES BLOW New York Times News Service D onald Trump has a thing about Barack Obama. Trump is obsessed with Obama. Obama haunts Trump’s dreams. One of Trump’s pri- mary motivators is the absolute erasure of Obama — were it possible — not only from the political landscape but also from the history books. Trump is president because of Obama, or more precisely, because of his hostility to Obama. Trump came onto the political scene by attacking Obama. Trump has questioned not only Obama’s birthplace but also his academic and literary pedigree. He was head cheerleader of the racial “birther” lie and also cast doubt on whether Obama attended the schools he attended or even whether he wrote his acclaimed books. Trump has lied often about Obama: saying his inauguration crowd size exceeded Obama’s, say- ing that Obama tapped his phones and, just this week, saying that Obama colluded with the Russians. It’s like a 71-year-old male ver- sion of Jan from what I would call the Bratty Bunch: Obama, Obama, Obama. Trump wants to be Obama — held in high esteem. But, alas, Trump is Trump, and that is now and has always been trashy. Trump accrued financial wealth, but he never accrued cultural capital, at least not among the people from whom he most wanted it. Therefore, Trump is constantly whining about not being sufficiently applauded, commended, thanked, liked. His emotional injury is mea- sured in his mind against Obama. How could Obama have been so celebrated while he is so reviled? The whole world seemed to love Obama — and by extension, held America in high regard — but the world loathes Trump. A Pew Research Center report issued this week found: “Trump and many of his key policies are broadly unpopular around the globe, and ratings for the U.S. have declined steeply in many nations. According to a new Pew Research Center survey spanning 37 nations, a median of just 22 percent has confidence in Trump to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs. This stands in contrast to the final years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when a median of 64 percent expressed confidence in Trump’s predecessor to direct America’s role in the world.” Obama was a phenomenon. He was elegant and cerebral. He was devoid of personal scandal and drenched in personal erudition. He was a walking, talking rebuttal to white supremacy and the myths of black pathology and inferiority. AP Photo/Evan Vucci President Donald Trump speaks during an energy roundtable with tribal, state and local leaders Wednesday in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. He was the personification of the possible — a possible future in which legacy power and advantages are redistributed more broadly to all with the gift of talent and the discipline to excel. It is not a stretch here to link people’s feelings about Obama to their feelings about his blackness. Trump himself has more than once linked the two. Just two months before Trump announced his candidacy, he weighed in on the unrest in Baltimore in the wake of the police killing of Freddie Gray, tweeting: “Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a pos- itive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!” For Trump, the mark of being a successful president is the degree to which he can expunge Obama’s presidency. Months earlier, following the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police killing of Michael Brown, Trump complained: “President Obama has absolutely no control (or respect) over the African American community— they have fared so poorly under his presidency.” Trump also tweeted: “Sadly, because president Obama has done such a poor job as presi- dent, you won’t see another black president for generations!” Clearly, not only was Obama’s blackness in the front of Trump’s mind, but Trump also appears to subscribe to the racist theory that success or failure of a member of a racial group redounds to all in that group. This is a burden under which most minorities in this country labor. Trump’s racial ideas were apparently a selling point among his supporters. Recent research has dispensed with the myth of “eco- nomic anxiety” and shone a light instead on the central importance race played in Trump’s march to the White House. As the researchers Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel reported in The Nation in March: “In short, our analysis indicates that Donald Trump successfully lev- eraged existing resentment towards African Americans in combination with emerging fears of increased racial diversity in America to reshape the presidential electorate, strongly attracting nativists towards Trump and pushing some more affluent and highly educated people with more cosmopolitan views to support Hillary Clinton. Racial identity and attitudes have further displaced class as the central battle- ground of American politics.” Trump was sent to Washington to strip it of all traces of Obama, to treat the Obama legacy as a histori- cal oddity. Trump’s entire campaign was about undoing what Obama had done. Indeed, much of what Trump has accomplished — and it hasn’t been much — has been to undo Obama’s accomplishments, like pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate agreement and revers- ing an Obama-era rule that helped prevent guns from being purchased by certain mentally ill people. For Trump, even plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act aren’t so much about creating better policy as they are about dismantling Obama’s legacy. The problem with Obamacare isn’t that it hasn’t borne fruit, but rather that it bears Obama’s name. For Trump, the mark of being a successful president is the degree to which he can expunge Obama’s presidency. WHERE TO WRITE • U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D): 2338 Rayburn HOB, Washing- ton, D.C., 20515. Phone: 202- 225- 0855. Fax 202-225-9497. District office: 12725 SW Millikan Way, Suite 220, Beaverton, OR 97005. Phone: 503-469-6010. Fax 503-326- 5066. Web: bonamici.house. gov/ • U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D): 313 Hart Senate Office Building, Wash- ington, D.C. 20510. Phone: 202-224- 3753. Web: www.merkley.senate.gov • U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D): 221 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510. Phone: 202-224-5244. Web: www.wyden. senate.gov • State Rep. Brad Witt (D): State Capitol, 900 Court Street N.E., H-373, Salem, OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-1431. Web: www.leg.state. or.us/witt/ Email: rep.bradwitt@ state.or.us • State Rep. Deborah Boone (D): 900 Court St. N.E., H-481, Salem, OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-1432. Email: rep.deborah boone@state. or.us District office: P.O. Box 928, Cannon Beach, OR 97110. Phone: 503-986-1432. Web: www.leg.state. or.us/ boone/ • State Sen. Betsy Johnson (D): State Capitol, 900 Court St. N.E., S-314, Salem, OR 97301. Telephone: 503-986-1716. Email: sen.betsy john- son@state.or.us Web: www.betsy- johnson.com District Office: P.O. Box R, Scappoose, OR 97056. Phone: 503-543-4046. Fax: 503-543-5296. Astoria office phone: 503-338-1280. • Port of Astoria: Executive Director, 10 Pier 1 Suite 308, Asto- ria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-741-3300. Email: admin@portofastoria.com • Clatsop County Board of Com- missioners: c/o County Manager, 800 Exchange St., Suite 410, Astoria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-325-1000.
