OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 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
Colin Murphey/EO Media Group
Coast Guard personnel performed routine maintenance on one of
their helicopters last week in a hangar at Air Station Astoria.
The coming war on business
Put America
first by really T
supporting the
Coast Guard
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times News Service
‘A
merica First” remains an empty slogan, judging by an
absence of White House and congressional interest
in replacing the Coast Guard’s fleet of increasingly
antique helicopters.
It’s a tribute to the Coast Guard’s pragmatic can-do atti-
tude that aging Sikorsky MH-60Ts well beyond their original
intended service limit are still doing well at a variety of tough
missions. Most recently, Coast Guard personnel played essen-
tial roles in rescuing Americans whose homes were smashed by
series of powerful hurricanes, a life-and-death responsibility that
depends on reliable equipment.
That the helicopters are capable of so much — so far, at
least — is a testimonial to the hard and smart work outlined
in a story last week by The Daily Astorian’s Edward Stratton
(“Maintenance never stops for Coast Guard helicopters,” Sept.
19). Locally, Air Station Astoria’s three MH-60Ts have all
logged more than 13,000 hours in the air — 3,000 hours lon-
ger than they were meant to. Keeping each safely flying requires
24.4 hours of maintenance for every hour in flight. To the sur-
prise of no one who lives here, corrosion is a main issue, with
the aircraft subjected to climatic extremes in this salty place.
Colin Murphey’s photographs accompanying our story are
remarkable for showing just how well local Coasties care for
these aging helicopters. With recent classic car shows in Seaside
and Ocean Park freshly in mind, the attention lavished on the
MH-60Ts is reminiscent of a car fanatic restoring their mechani-
cal baby not just once, but over and over and over again.
Shockingly, the Coast Guard has been directed to keep these
already well-used aircraft flying at least until 2035 — by which
time they will in many cases be decades older than the brave
pilots and crews we’ll expect to operate them. This is a travesty
and ought to be unacceptable to all Americans and our elected
leaders.
Always among our most successful and cost-efficient fed-
eral agencies, the Coast Guard currently is housed in the vast
Department of Homeland Security, to which is was moved after
the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It makes a certain amount of
sense to place it in that bureaucracy, as it almost by definition
is tasked with defending our coasts. However, it also performs
many tasks that aren’t related to national defense. In our area, it
is perhaps most famous for search-and-rescue missions, but also
is key to maintaining aids to safe navigation, overseeing com-
mercial shipping in various ways, and a host of other functions.
Though it no longer part of the armed services run by the
Pentagon, our story described how the Coast Guard is lumped
with the Army and Navy for purposes of procuring a next-gen-
eration helicopter, perhaps the Army’s Future Vertical Lift. This
strategy may in part be a deliberate effort at economizing by
Coast Guard leadership. But it shouldn’t have to be left in the
position of waiting to ride the coattails of the Army or anyone
else.
We live in complicated times, in which America’s coastlines
face growing climatic threats. We are, in a way, gaining a new
coastline to defend as arctic sea ice retreats and creates an active
new shipping channel through the Arctic Ocean. Illicit drug
shipments and refugee crises will be doing nothing but increas-
ing along our southern border. To deal with all this, plus unfore-
seen emergencies, will require much of the Coast Guard. And it
deserves much better than hand-me-downs from the military.
President Donald Trump and his supporters are attached to
the “America First” mantra. Where better to start than to really
stand up for the Coast Guard, which saves lives right here at
home? For a fraction of a percent of the Pentagon’s budget, we
could provide advanced equipment and support — and raises —
for the brave men and women who defend our shores and water-
ways. We should immediately do so.
Waiting until 2035 for basic equipment isn’t an acceptable
option.
he only time I saw Sam
Francis face to face — in the
Washington Times cafeteria
sometime in the
late 1980s or early
1990s — I thought
he was a crank,
but it’s clear now
that he was at that
moment becoming
one of the most
prescient writers of the past 50
years. There’s very little Donald
Trump has done or said that Francis
didn’t champion a quarter century
ago.
In a series of essays for conser-
vative magazines like Chronicles,
Francis hammered home three
key insights. The first was that
globalization was screwing Middle
America. The Cold War had just
ended, capitalism seemed trium-
phant, and the Clinton years seemed
to be an era of broad prosperity.
But Francis stressed that the service
economy was ruining small farms
and taking jobs from the working
class.
His second insight was that the
Republican and conservative estab-
lishment did not understand what
was happening. He railed against
the pro-business “Economic Men”
who thought GDP growth could
solve the nation’s problems, and
the Washington Republicans, who
he thought were infected with the
values of the educated elites.
In 1991, when his political
mentor, Pat Buchanan, was contem-
plating a presidential bid, Francis
told him to break with the conserva-
tive movement. “These people are
defunct,” Francis told Buchanan.
“Go to New Hampshire and call
yourself a patriot, a nationalist, an
America Firster, but don’t even use
the word ‘conservative.’ It doesn’t
mean anything anymore.”
His third insight was that politics
was no longer about left versus
right. Instead, a series of smaller
conflicts — religious versus secular,
nationalist versus globalist, white
versus nonwhite — were all merg-
ing into a larger polarity, ruling class
versus Middle America.
“Middle American groups are
more and more coming to perceive
their exploitation at the hands of the
dominant elites. The exploitation
works on several fronts — eco-
nomically, by hypertaxation and
the design of a globalized economy
dependent on exports and services
in place of manufacturing; cultur-
ally, by the managed destruction
of Middle American norms and
institutions; and politically, by the
regimentation of Middle Americans
under the federal leviathan.”
Middle American voters,
he wrote, were stuck without a
party, appalled by pro-corporate
Republican economic policies on
the one hand and liberal cultural
radicalism on the other. They swung
to whichever party seemed most
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Palace Hotel during the United Na-
tions General Assembly Thursday in New York.
likely to resist the ruling class,
but neither party really provided a
solution. “A nationalist reaction is
almost inevitable and will probably
assume populist form when it
arrives. The sooner it comes the
better.”
The Buchanan campaign was
the first run at what we now know
as Trumpian populism. In a profile
of Francis called “The Castaway,”
Michael Brendan Dougherty smartly
observed that Buchanan and Francis
weren’t just against government.
They were against the entire cultural
hegemony of the ruling class.
As the tech
behemoths
intrude more
deeply into
daily life
and our very
minds, they
will become a
defining issue
in American
politics.
Francis wrote a wickedly
brilliant 1996 essay on Buchanan,
“From Household to Nation”:
“The ‘culture war’ for Buchanan is
not Republican swaggering about
family values and dirty movies but
a battle over whether the nation
itself can continue to exist under the
onslaught of the militant secularism,
acquisitive egoism, economic and
political globalism, demographic
inundation, and unchecked state
centralism supported by the ruling
class.”
Francis urged Buchanan to run
an unorthodox campaign (of the
sort Trump ended up running) and
was ignored. “If Buchanan loses
the nomination, it will be because
his time has not yet come,” Francis
wrote. The moment would end
up coming in 2016, 11 years after
Francis’ death.
Francis’ thought was infected by
the same cancer that may destroy
Trumpism. Francis was a racist. His
friends and allies counseled him not
to express his racist views openly,
but people like that always go there,
sooner or later.
The Civil War was an open
wound for many in his circle, and
in 1994 Francis told a conference,
“The civilization that we as whites
created in Europe and America
could not have developed apart
from the genetic endowments of the
creating people, nor is there any rea-
son to believe that the civilization
can be successfully transmitted to a
different people.”
He was fired by The Washington
Times and cast out of the conser-
vative movement by William F.
Buckley and others.
When you look at today’s world
through the prism of Francis’ work,
a few things seem clear: Trump is
not a one-time phenomenon; the
populist tide has been rising for
years. His base sticks with him
through scandal because it’s not
just about him; it’s a movement
defined against the so-called ruling
class. Congressional Republicans
get all tangled on health care and
other issues because they don’t
understand their voters. Finally,
Trump may not be the culmination
but merely a way station toward an
even purer populism.
Trump is nominally pro-busi-
ness. The next populism will
probably take his ethnic nationalism
and add an anti-corporate, anti-tech
layer. Google, Facebook, Amazon
and Apple stand for everything
Francis hated — economically,
culturally, demographically and
nationalistically.
As the tech behemoths intrude
more deeply into daily life and our
very minds, they will become a
defining issue in American politics.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a new
demagogue emerged, one that is
even more pure Francis.
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