OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Managing Editor
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
• The many thousands of workers on the North Coast who
each day create, distribute and provide goods and services that
make the region a better place to live. Many often go unrecog-
nized as they go about their jobs and don’t receive the recognition
they deserve for their hard work. As Labor Day approaches, we
should all take time and say thank you for all they do.
Trump raises an army
By CHARLES BLOW
New York Times News Service
I
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Teammates cheer on their anchor leg runner at the finish line of
the Hood to Coast Relay in Seaside on Saturday.
• Organizers, volunteers and the more than 19,000 partici-
pants of last weekend’s 36th annual Hood to Coast Relay, which
raised $700,000 for Providence hospitals across Oregon, includ-
ing Providence Seaside, and the fight against cancer. Runners and
walkers came from all 50 states and 43 countries and participated
in three events last Saturday: the 199-mile Hood to Coast Relay,
the Portland to Coast Walk Relay and the Portland to Coast High
School Challenge. It marked the fourth year that the Providence
Health and Services system was the primary beneficiary from
money raised in the events. After runners finished their trek from
Timberline Lodge to the Seaside Promenade, thousands cele-
brated on the beach and into the evening with live music perfor-
mances and plenty of food, drink and camaraderie.
• Jim Servino, the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of
Commerce’s membership director, who is leaving the cham-
ber and moving to Texas to be closer to grandchildren. Servino
has been active in a number of the region’s nonprofit organiza-
tions and chamber members recognized him for his service at a
networking breakfast earlier this week. Former Warrenton Mayor
Mark Kujala has joined the chamber, taking over as member-
ship director.
• Penny Cowden, executive director of the Columbia
Memorial Hospital Foundation, who was named to the board of
governors of the National Association of Nonprofit Organizations
and Executives. The group is comprised of members from all 50
states, and it oversees the codification of guidelines on a national
level that govern sound charitable practice. Cowden has more
than 20 years experience in health care philanthropy and has
held executive positions with major health systems in four states
before joining Columbia Memorial’s foundation.
• Supporters of the Wildlife Center of the North Coast,
which recently teed up its first Birdies and Bogeys charity golf
tournament in Seaside. The inaugural event raised $3,000 from
players and sponsors, which will be used in the center’s continu-
ing wildlife rehabilitation efforts.
CALLOUTS
• Those who are already trying to profit through scams, online
and telephone fraud and price gouging in the wake of Hurricane
Harvey. North Coast’s residents are reknown for having gener-
ous hearts and a great desire to help those in need, but beware
of the scams that are already cropping up. The Texas Attorney
General’s Office says it has already received more than 600
complaints and that the number continues to grow each day.
Officials are warning about fake fundraisers that prey on peo-
ple’s sense of charity that are being shared in a verity of for-
mats online and through fraudulent telephone campaigns.
Authorities are urging people to only donate to established
organizations. The Federal Trade Commission advises peo-
ple to use it’s charity checklist when donating to relief efforts.
The checklist can be found at https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/
articles/0074-giving-charity#Checklist.
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.
know that Harvey is heavy on
America’s heart.
It is certainly heavy on mine.
My oldest brother
lives in the hard-
hit suburban Hous-
ton town of Hum-
ble, just outside of
George Bush Inter-
continental Airport
and on the shores of
the Spring Creek and the west fork of
the San Jacinto River.
And now the storm is barreling
toward my hometown in north Lou-
isiana where my mother and two of
my brothers live.
I’m anxious. I wish that I could
take a reprieve from politics and
simply focus on the human suffer-
ing and human altruism on display
in the affected areas. But, alas, I can-
not. Politics keep creeping in. Politics
keep occurring concurrently.
Dealing with devastation
Set aside for a moment that Don-
ald Trump is the person who pulled
America out of the Paris climate
accords, even though models suggest
that climate change makes severe
weather more severe, and as Polit-
ico reports, “Harvey is the third 500-
year flood to hit the Houston area
in the past three years.” Forget for a
moment that, according to Slate, just
10 days before Harvey made landfall
Trump signed an executive order that
included “eliminating an Obama-era
rule called the federal flood risk man-
agement standard that asked agencies
to account for climate change projec-
tions when they approved projects.”
The final assessment on how this
administration handles the storm
can’t be made while it still rages, but
what Trump says and does now is
open to analysis. In that vein, a line
from Trump’s joint news conference
with the president of Finland stood
out. When asked about pardoning
former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio as
Harvey was making landfall, Trump
responded:
“Actually, in the middle of a hur-
ricane, even though it was a Friday
evening, I assumed the ratings would
be far higher than they would be
normally.”
Consider what this man is saying:
He used the horror and anxious antic-
ipation of a monster storm menacing
millions of Americans — particularly
in Houston whose population is 44
percent Hispanic — in a political cal-
culation to get more ratings and more
eyeballs on the fact that he was using
the power of the presidency to for-
give, and thereby condone, Arpaio’s
racism.
Theory
Why does Trump continue to do
things that are so divisive and alien-
ating to the majority of Americans?
Why does he keep fueling the white-
hot fire of his base to the exclusion of
the other segments of the country?
I have a theory: Trump and the
people who either shield or support
him are locked in a relationship of
reciprocation, like a ball of snakes.
Everyone is using everyone else.
The oligarchs see Trump as a
pathway to slashing regulations and
cutting taxes for the rich. According
to a July analysis by the Tax Policy
Center, “Nearly 40 percent of the tax
cut would flow to households in the
top 1 percent of the income distribu-
tion, giving those earners an average
annual tax cut of around $270,000.”
Establishment Republicans see
him as a path to reversing the New
Deal.
Steve Bannon-ists see him as a
path to the “deconstruction of the
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
President Donald Trump salutes as he arrives on Marine One on the
South Lawn of the White House Wednesday.
administrative state.” All Republi-
cans, but particularly the religious
right, see him as a securer of conser-
vative Supreme Court justices. The
blue-collar Trump voters view him as
a last chance to breathe life into the
dying dream that waning industries
and government-supported white cul-
tural assurances can be revived. And
the white nationalists, white suprem-
acists, racists and Nazis — to the
degree that they can be separated
from the others — see him as a tool
of vengeance and as an instrument of
their defense.
Trump sees all these people who
want to use him, and he’s using them
right back. Trump made an industry
out of selling conspicuous consump-
tion. He sold the ideas that greed was
good, luxury was aspirational and
indulgence was innocent.
Trump’s supporters see him as
vector; he sees them as market.
Marketing is how he has made his
money and attained his infamy. That
is why he is so obsessed with the
media and crowds and polls (at least
when he was doing well in them):
He sees people, in his die-hard base
at least, who have thoroughly bought
into the product of Trumpism and he
is doing everything to please them
and make them repeat customers.
But in addition, and perhaps more
sinisterly, I think that Trump is rais-
ing an army, whether or not he would
describe it as such, and whether or
not those being involved recognize
their own conscription. This is not
a traditional army, but it is an army
no less.
And, when I say army, I’m not
speaking solely of armed militia,
although there is a staggering num-
ber of guns continuously being put
into circulation. As the NRA’s Insti-
tute for Legislative Action wrote in
June: “Each month of Trump’s presi-
dency has seen over two million fire-
arm-related background checks. Only
in 2016, when Americans faced los-
ing their Second Amendment rights
forever, did the FBI run more checks
during a January to April period.”
I’m also talking about the unarmed,
but unwavering: the army of zombie
zealots.
Raising an army
How do you raise an army?
You do that by dividing America
into tribes and, as “president,” align-
ing yourself with the most extreme
tribe, all the while promoting mili-
tarization among people who sup-
port you.
You do it by worshipping mili-
tary figures and talking in militaris-
tic terms.
You reverse Barack Obama’s
executive order on gun control. As
PolitiFact put it: “Obama’s order
made it mandatory for the Social
Security Administration to release
information about mentally ill recipi-
ents of Social Security benefits. This
information would then be included
in background checks, essentially
prohibiting people with mental ill-
nesses to buy guns.”
You cozy up to police unions and
encourage police brutality.
You do this by rescinding Obama-
era limits on the militarization of
police departments; a move that,
according to The New York Times,
allows these departments “access
to military surplus equipment typi-
cally used in warfare, including gre-
nade launchers, armored vehicles and
bayonets.”
You do this by defending armed
white nationalists and Nazis in
Charlottesville.
You do this by defending monu-
ments of Confederates who fought
to preserve the noxious institution of
slavery, and you do it by tweeting the
coded language of white suprema-
cists: “Sad to see the history and cul-
ture of our great country being ripped
apart with the removal of our beauti-
ful statues and monuments.”
You do this by pardoning Arpaio,
a man who joked about an Arizona
jail being a “concentration camp,”
signaling to people that racist brutal-
ity is permissible.
You also do this by attempting to
reduce or marginalize populations of
people opposed to you: Build a wall,
return to failed drug policies that
helped fuel mass incarceration, ban
Muslims, curb even legal immigra-
tion, increase immigration arrests.
Dealing with investigation
And why raise this army? Again, I
have a theory.
Should something emerge from
the Robert Mueller investigation
— an investigation that is continu-
ing unabated even as Harvey rages
— that should implicate Trump and
pose a threat to the continuation of
his tenure, Trump wants to position
any attempt to remove him as a polit-
ical coup. His efforts to delegitimize
the press are all part of this because
one day the press may have to deliver
ruinous news.
In that scenario, Trump knows
that the oligarchs and establishment
Republicans would be quick to aban-
don him. Their support isn’t intrinsic;
it’s transactional. But the base — the
market — the ones with guns as well
as those who are simply excited, the
die-hards, the ones he keeps appeal-
ing to and applauding, will not for-
sake him. They see attacks on Trump
as attacks on themselves.
Trump is playing an endgame.
In the best-case scenario, these die-
hards are future customers; in the
worst, they are future confederates.
If these people should come to
believe — as Trump would have
them believe — that establishment
systems have unfairly and con-
spiratorially acted to remove from
office their last and only champion
— another thing Trump would have
them believe — what will they do?
What would Trump’s army do
if he were compelled to leave but
refused to graciously comply?