OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2007
What is lurking in and around Fort Stevens State Park this summer? Is
it a large dog, a coyote or perhaps a bobcat?
A few witnesses say that they are absolutely certain it is a cougar —
and some say they have seen it more than once.
“It walked around like it owned the place,” said Hammond resident
Amanda Robison, describing the animal she saw a month ago while driv-
ing on Pacific Drive near the park. “I went home and looked it up online
and it was definitely a cougar. It had the long tail and the rounded tummy
and the slinky kind of body.”
CORVALLIS — Seaside has been reduced to blue, red and
yellow buildings at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Labora-
tory at Oregon State University.
The lab has constructed a small model of downtown Seaside
to study the effects of a tsunami. Currently, the effects of tsu-
nami waves on the model of Seaside are merely observations
since the lab is conducting two other studies in the same pool.
At the December conclusion of a study examining how tsuna-
mis shift sand along coastlines, being conducted by a Princ-
eton university researcher, the miniature Seaside will take
front-and-center.
Jon Englund’s controversial Astoria waterfront development project
hit a roadblock Tuesday, amid detailed arguing over procedures.
Astoria Planning Commission members debated the subject at the spe-
cial meeting Tuesday and wound up back where they were two weeks ago
— deadlocked.
But the commissioners did eventually approve a staff report recom-
mending denial of a conditional use permit, despite remaining split down
the middle on the issue.
50 years ago — 1967
The Daily Astorian/File
This is one of West Coast’s new Mini-liners which make two
round-trip flights daily to Olympia, Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Asto-
ria providing convenient connections from Seattle, Portland, and
south to San Francisco.
The U.S. Coast Guard had a busy weekend as an enormous
fleet of sport fishing craft, estimated at several thousand boats,
put to sea in search of salmon.
The most spectacular rescue involved extricating two people
trapped inside the cabin of a cruiser just inside the Columbia
River mouth Sunday afternoon.
The rescue took an hour.
The City Council informally approved at a Tuesday breakfast meeting
the appointment of a municipal committee to carry out additional studies
of a possible half million dollar off-street parking project taking up two
downtown half blocks on Marine Drive.
Richard Paulsen and Chairman Robert C. Larson of the Planning
Commission both urged upon the council Tuesday the necessity of tak-
ing some such measure to save the downtown core area from murderous
competition from a possible new shopping center on the city fringes or
even outside the city.
The Sunset Empire continued in the dry grasp on one of the
most serious, prolonged spells of heat and drought in modern
history this week, but the weatherman held out some dim hope
of rain Friday.
75 years ago — 1942
Prospects of a severe automobile dim-out in Astoria, which will
reduce driving and pedestrian traffic to the safety level of zero-zero on
certain streets for the duration, were aired here today following a meeting
Monday with Capt. William J. M. Rogers, military adviser to the Oregon
state defense council.
Dim-out rules for vehicles prescribe headlights reduced to a maximum
of 250 candle power. Present auto lights average 25,000 candlepower in
the upper beam and 75,000 in the lower. Reducing the lights to the max-
imum allowed in dim-out means reducing speed of travel to 10 miles an
hour, or less.
The defense council has need for about 100 more trained
firewatchers, according to David Lewis, coordinator. The duty
of the watchers will be to spot and report fires during a raid,
and to keep an eye on homes and business establishments for
fires.
Tom Murphey, personnel man with the Kaiser Shipbuilding corpora-
tion, will be back in Astoria this weekend or the early part of next week
to take welders from the local vocational school who have qualified since
his first visit, two weeks ago. Charles F. Gibson, director of the vocational
school, announces.
When Murphey was here before he took every welder at the school
who could qualify on the first position test, but within two days the classes
were full to overflowing again, Gibson says.
Finding a way to
roll back fanaticism
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times News Service
W
e’re living in an age of
anxiety. The country is
being transformed by
complex forces,
such as changing
demographics
and technological
disruption. Many
people live within
a bewildering
freedom, without
institutions to trust, unattached to
compelling religions and sources of
meaning, uncertain about their own
lives. Anxiety is not so much a fear
of a specific thing but a fear of every-
thing, an unnamable dread about the
future. People will do anything to
escape it.
Donald Trump is the perfect
snake oil salesman for this moment.
He lacks inwardness and therefore is
terrified by the possibility of anxiety.
He has been escaping self-scrutiny
his whole life and has become a
genius at the self-exculpating ratio-
nalization. He took a nation beset by
uncertainty and he gave it a series
of “explanations” that were simple,
crude, affirming and wrong.
Trump gave people a quick pass
out of anxiety. Everything could be
blamed on foreigners, the idiotic
elites. The problems are clear, and
the answers are easy. He has loosed
a certain style of thinking. The true
link between the Trump adminis-
tration and those pathetic loons in
Charlottesville is not just bigotry, but
also conspiracy mongering.
In the White House you have
pseudo-intellectuals like Steve
Bannon who think the world is
secretly controlled by the “deep
state.” You have memos like the
one written by the recently fired
Rich Higgins, positing a massive
worldwide conspiracy involving the
American Civil Liberties Union, the
Muslim Brotherhood, the United
Nations and global Marxism. The
alt-right, which has emerged in
support of the Trump administration,
is marked by the same conspiratorial
epistemology. It provides explana-
tions for complex events that allow
its followers to avoid anxiety. The
leaders of the alt-right claim to
possess superior understanding that
pierces through the myths that blind
common mortals.
The world is secretly controlled
by the globalists. The Sandy Hook
school shooting never happened.
There’s a child abuse ring run by
Clintonites out of a pizzeria in
Washington, D.C. All the ambi-
guities of life can be explained by
pointing to the malevolent webs of
secret power that only you — you
AP Photo/Steve Helber
White nationalist demonstrators use shields as they guard the en-
trance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday.
precious, superior few — can see and
understand.
From here it’s a short leap to
those losers in Charlottesville. If the
alt-right thinks the globalists secretly
and malevolently control society, the
neo-Nazis go back to the original
version and believe that a conspiracy
of Jewish bankers does. For them,
tribalism is not only a way to feel
some vestige of pride in their own
lonely selves, it’s also an explanatory
tool. The world can be a bewildering
place, but not if you see it as a
righteous war between whites and
blacks, between straights and gays.
The neo-Nazis are not the first group
to discover that war is a force that
can give an empty life meaning, even
a race war.
The age
of anxiety
inevitably
leads to an age
of fanaticism.
The age of anxiety inevitably
leads to an age of fanaticism, as
people seek crude palliatives for the
dizziness of freedom. I’m beginning
to think the whole depressing spec-
tacle of this moment — the Trump
presidency and beyond — is caused
by a breakdown of intellectual virtue,
a breakdown in America’s ability to
face evidence objectively, to pay due
respect to reality, to deal with com-
plex and unpleasant truths. The intel-
lectual virtues may seem elitist, but
once a country tolerates dishonesty,
incuriosity and intellectual laziness,
then everything else falls apart.
The temptation is simply to blast
the neo-Nazis, the alt-right, the
Trumpkins and the rest for being
bigoted, vicious and hate-filled.
And some of that is necessary. The
boundaries of common decency have
to be defined.
But throughout history the wiser
minds have understood that anger
and moral posturing are not a good
antidote to rage and fanaticism.
Competing vitriols only build on
each other.
In fact, the most powerful answer
to fanaticism is modesty. Modesty is
an epistemology directly opposed to
the conspiracy mongering mindset.
It means having the courage to
understand that the world is too
complicated to fit into one political
belief system. It means understand-
ing there are no easy answers or
malevolent conspiracies that can
explain the big political questions or
the existential problems. Progress is
not made by crushing some swarm
of malevolent foes; it’s made by
finding balance between competing
truths — between freedom and
security, diversity and solidarity.
There’s always going to be count-
er-evidence and mystery. There is
no final arrangement that will end
conflict, just endless searching and
adjustment.
Modesty means having the
courage to rest in anxiety and not
try to quickly escape it. Modesty
means being tough enough to endure
the pain of uncertainty and coming
to appreciate that pain. Uncertainty
and anxiety throw you off the smug
island of certainty and force you
into the free waters of creativity and
learning. As Kierkegaard put it, “The
more original a human being is, the
deeper is his anxiety.”
Over the next few months I’m
hoping to write several columns on
why modesty and moderation are
superior to the spiraling purity move-
ments we see today. It seems like a
good time for assertive modesty to
take a stand.
WHERE TO WRITE
• U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici
(D): 439 Cannon House Office
Building, Washington, D.C., 20515.
Phone: 202- 225-0855. Fax 202-225-
9497. District office: 12725 SW Mil-
likan 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.