OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JULY 6, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Oil-by-rail
project carries
too much risk
S
hould Astoria city councilors add their voice to oppose
a proposed oil-by-rail terminal at the Port of Vancouver
that environmentalists say could threaten the health of the
Columbia River estuary?
On the surface, it appears to be an easy project to oppose,
But digging a little deeper, as City Councilor Bruce Jones
pointed out, shows it’s a bit more complex. Ultimately, though,
we believe councilors should oppose it.
The Tesoro Salvage terminal, on the drawing board since
2013, would be the largest oil-by-rail project in North America.
Five mile-and-a-half long trains would carry a daily output of
360,000 barrels of crude oil that would then be loaded on oil
tankers that would cross the dangerous Columbia River Bar on
the way to their destinations, according to the nonprofit group
Columbia Riverkeeper.
There’s plenty of opposition already. The cities of
Vancouver, Portland, Spokane and Hood River have already
spoken against it. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee will make the
final decision whether to approve the project. The decision is
expected later this year or early next year.
During discussion at Monday’s City Council meeting,
Columbia Riverkeeper’s conservation director, Dan Serres,
said the project would dramatically increase the danger of an
oil spill in the river. The trains themselves also pose a serious
danger through potential derailment, he said.
While the council expressed safety concerns and appeared
in agreement, Jones, a retired U.S. Coast Guard commander,
brought out a few points for all to keep in mind. He said
refined petroleum products already move up and down the river
safely on a near daily basis, and if those products weren’t on
the river, they would be transported on highways. He said it’s
a complex issue because in addition to being a place of beauty
and natural resources, the river is a commercial highway. He
also said tankers that carry petroleum or other hazardous chem-
icals are heavily regulated, more so than the grain carriers that
we most often see on the river.
Jones said while he respects the work Columbia Riverkeeper
does, he wants to see the project’s environmental impact state-
ment and the current safety regulations for tankers and also get
the opinions of the bar pilots before considering a resolution on
the issue, which is expected to be presented for consideration
in August.
Jones is a credible, smart and knowledgeable professional.
But so, too, are many
Lower Columbia fisher-
men who actively oppose
We think the
upriver oil and coal projects
project simply
as representing existential
carries too
threats to one of our central
natural resource industries.
much risk
Beyond concerns about
and should be
potential train wrecks, oil
spills and industrial pol-
opposed. As
lution at the terminal site,
Jan Mitchell,
Washington state’s objec-
an Astoria
tions also are rooted in
broader worries about the
planning
need to continue transi-
commissioner,
tioning away from fos-
sil fuels. Governors of all
said at the
three mainland West Coast
meeting,
states perceive an immedi-
ate need to fill the vacuum
‘Anything that
left by the current White
happens to the
House and U.S. Department
river upstream,
Energy, which are reluctant
to address the problem of
happens to us.’
greenhouse-gas emissions.
In light of our continu-
ing need for petroleum-based fuels, it would be easy to set
aside distant concerns about sea-level rise. However, changes
in ocean chemistry and temperature patterns already are begin-
ning to impose direct damage, most notably to economically
vital shellfish industries. We have an immediate stake in
efforts to keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. While
stopping one oil terminal won’t make much substantive dif-
ference, it would be a powerful symbolic demonstration that
the West Coast remains united with the rest of the world in
being prepared to shift to new, less-harmful ways of producing
energy.
We think the project simply carries too much risk and should
be opposed. As Jan Mitchell, an Astoria planning commis-
sioner, said at the meeting, “Anything that happens to the river
upstream, happens to us.”
What’s the matter
with Republicans?
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
A child takes a picture as President Donald Trump speaks at the Fourth of July picnic for military families
on the South Lawn of the White House Tuesday.
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times News Service
O
ver the past two months the
Trump administration and
the Republicans in Congress
have proposed a
budget and two
health care plans
that would take
benefits away from
core Republican
constituencies,
especially work-
ing-class voters. And yet over this
time Donald Trump’s approval
rating has remained unchanged,
at 40 percent. During this period
the Republicans have successfully
defended a series of congressional
seats.
What’s going on? Why do work-
ing-class conservatives seem to vote
so often against their own economic
interests?
My stab at an answer would
begin in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Many Trump supporters live in
places that once were on the edge of
the American frontier. Life on that
frontier was fragile, perilous, lonely
and remorseless. If a single slip could
produce disaster, then discipline
and self-reliance were essential.
The basic pattern of life was an
underlying condition of peril, warded
off by an ethos of self-restraint, tem-
perance, self-control and strictness of
conscience.
Frontier towns sometimes went
from boomtown to Bible Belt in a
single leap. They started out lawless.
People needed to impose codes of
respectability to survive. Frontier
religions were often ascetic, banning
drinking, card-playing and dancing.
And yet there was always a whiff of
extreme disorder — drunkenness,
violence and fraud — threatening
from down below.
Today these places are no longer
frontier towns, but many of them
still exist on the same knife’s edge
between traditionalist order and
extreme dissolution.
For example, I have a friend who
is an avid Trump admirer. He sup-
ports himself as a part-time bartender
and a part-time home contractor, and
by doing various odd jobs on the
side. A good chunk of his income
is off the books. He has built up a
decent savings account, but he has
done it on his own, hustling, scrap-
ping his way, without any long-term
security. His income can vary sharply
from week to week. He doesn’t have
much trust in the institutions around
him. He has worked on government
construction projects but sees him-
self, rightly, as a small-business man.
This isn’t too different from the
hard, independent life on the frontier.
Many people in these places tend to
see their communities the way for-
eign policy realists see the world: as
an unvarnished struggle for resources
— as a tough world, a no-illusions
Anybody
who wants to
design policies
to help the
working class
has to make
sure they go
along the grain
of the vigorous
virtues, not
against them.
world, a world where conflict is built
into the fabric of reality.
The virtues most admired in
such places, then and now, are what
Shirley Robin Letwin once called the
vigorous virtues: “upright, self-suf-
ficient, energetic, adventurous,
independent minded, loyal to friends
and robust against foes.”
The sins that can cause the most
trouble are not the social sins —
injustice, incivility, etc. They are the
personal sins — laziness, self-indul-
gence, drinking, sleeping around.
Then as now, chaos is always
washing up against the door. Very
few people actually live up to the
code of self-discipline that they
preach. A single night of gambling
or whatever can produce life-altering
bad choices. Moreover, the forces of
social disruption are visible on every
street: the slackers taking advantage
of the disability programs, the people
popping out babies, the drug users,
the spouse abusers.
Voters in these places could use
some help. But these Americans,
like most Americans, vote on the
basis of their vision of what makes a
great nation. These voters, like most
voters, believe that the values of the
people are the health of the nation.
In their view, government doesn’t
reinforce the vigorous virtues. On the
contrary, it undermines them — by
fostering initiative-sucking depen-
dency, by letting people get away
with their mistakes so they can make
more of them and by getting in the
way of moral formation.
The only way you build up
self-reliant virtues, in this view,
is through struggle. Yet faraway
government experts want to cushion
people from the hardships that
are the schools of self-reliance.
Compassionate government threatens
to turn people into snowflakes.
In her book “Strangers in Their
Own Land,” sociologist Arlie
Hochschild quotes a woman from
Louisiana complaining about the
childproof lids on medicine and
the mandatory seat-belt laws. “We
let them throw lawn darts, smoked
alongside them,” the woman says
of her children. “And they survived.
Now it’s like your kid needs a hel-
met, knee pads and elbow pads to go
down the kiddy slide.”
Hochschild’s humble and import-
ant book is a meditation on why
working-class conservatives vote
against more government programs
for themselves. She emphasizes
that they perceive government as a
corrupt arm used against the little
guy. She argues that these voters may
vote against their economic interests,
but they vote for their emotional
interests, for candidates who share
their emotions about problems and
groups.
I’d say they believe that big
government support would provide
short-term assistance, but it would be
a long-term poison to the values that
are at the core of prosperity. You and
I might disagree with that theory. But
it’s a plausible theory. Anybody who
wants to design policies to help the
working class has to make sure they
go along the grain of the vigorous
virtues, not against them.