OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 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
Celebrate the
success stories in
local health care
T
wo articles in last Friday’s edition of The Daily Astorian
and some stories sure to appear in coming months tell
of some remarkable developments in local and regional
health care — advances that make our lives better.
A front-page story detailed the experience of Ronald Paapke
of Lewis and Clark, who was saved from a potentially deadly or
disabling stroke in September by his diligent wife, Jane Leino,
and fast teamwork by medical professionals. Stricken at home
by a sudden onset of paralysis, Paapke was being strangled by a
large blood clot in his carotid artery between his neck and brain.
Fast action by Leino, the Lewis and Clark Fire District,
Medix, Columbia Memorial Hospital, Life Flight Network and
Oregon Health & Science University delivered Paapke into
the care OHSU interventional neuroradiologist Dr. Hormozd
Bozorgchami. Soon after, Bozorgchami withdrew the clot.
Paapke experienced an almost immediate and complete recovery.
The ability to use a telemedicine electronic link between
Columbia Memorial and OHSU — an increasingly common
technology in rural hospitals — in essence gave Paapke access
to top stroke experts within the short window of time when last-
ing damage from the stroke could be avoided. Our photo of him
sitting at his dining table is an amazing testimonial to how far
stroke care has come in recent years. A generation ago — perhaps
even a few years ago — Paapke’s family might have attended
his funeral or at least would have faced a hard time tending to his
needs.
On our Weekend Break page, Laura Snyder gave an annual
update on her life with metastatic breast cancer. It was a beau-
tiful, angry and brave report from the front lines of a war that
appears to be seriously mismanaged on a variety of levels.
Snyder is grateful to be alive and certainly makes no effort to
play the “victim card.” Every day she deals with pain, discom-
fort and knowledge that would leave many people in a melted
puddle of despair. But she makes no bones about the fact that the
nation’s estimated 155,000 current sufferers of metastatic breast
cancer — in which tumors spread to other organs — are being
neglected by a health care and fundraising system that has differ-
ent priorities.
Delaying game
Good news about some cancers has allowed us to become
overly optimistic about the fates of all cancer patients. For
many like Snyder, there is delaying game versus death, one that
depends in part on just how long patients are able to withstand
the rigors of chemotherapy.
For Synder, Cancer Awareness Month in October is at least
partly a sham, substituting shallow awareness for a much more
focused and serious effort to fund research into why cancers
spread and how to more effectively combat them once they do.
“I guess I believe the dire and fatal breast cancer situation
needs to change, quickly, using every resource that can be mus-
tered. This does not mean wearing a pink sweatband while you
work out, or eating chicken from a pink bucket of KFC. …
Please be certain the dollars you give are not for stuff that will
end up at a landfill or the Goodwill but for research,” she wrote.
She recommends direct donations to Metavivor, the Metastatic
Breast Cancer Network and Breast Cancer Action.
Differing outcomes for local stroke and cancer patients are a
result of many factors, not least the incredible complexity of can-
cer. It’s not one disease, but many. Considering there probably
will never be a single “cure” for all these cancers, it’s significant
that patients like Snyder now manage to live years beyond their
initial diagnosis. Although some genuine gains have been made
in converting cancer into a chronic illness instead of an immedi-
ate death sentence, we need reminding that we are far from the
finish line.
Real change
That we are able to share stories like Paapke’s and Snyder’s
is itself a sign of how much things have changed in local med-
icine and our society. Their willingness to share their triumphs
and struggles is a real change from not so long ago, when there
wasn’t as much good news to report. Although our area still is
remote in some ways, it’s nearly routine to expect advanced med-
ical care here, with relatively strong links to the internationally
famous care available in the Pacific Northwest’s growing cities.
On this theme, future stories will have much to say about
the new Columbia Memorial Hospital-OHSU Knight Cancer
Collaborative in Astoria. The partners assert the cancer center is
a game-changer for cancer care in our area. This seems likely to
be more than hyperbole. The ability to obtain additional therapies
that once required patients to make many arduous trips will ease
suffering and save lives.
We can all feel proud of how far local health care has come,
even while we push for better answers for diseases like metastatic
breast cancer.
How Trump opened
the door to Moore
By MICHELLE GOLDBERG
New York Times News Service
I
n 2002, the Alabama Supreme
Court issued a ruling in a child
custody battle between a lesbian
mother and an
allegedly abusive
father. The parents
had originally lived
in Los Angeles,
and when they
divorced in 1992,
the mother received
primary physical custody. But she
was an alcoholic, and in 1996, she
sent her three children to live with
her ex-husband, who’d since moved
to Alabama, while she went to rehab.
Her lawyer, Wendy Brooks Crew,
told me they had an understanding
that the kids would stay with their
dad for a year, but he refused to
return them to their mother because
she was living with a woman.
There was evidence that the father
was abusing the kids, who by 2002
were teenagers. He acknowledged
whipping them with a belt and
forcing them to sit with paper bags
over their heads. He refused to send
the younger children to summer
school, even though their grades
were bad. When the kids called
their mother, their father taped the
conversations. By the time the case
got to the Alabama Supreme Court, a
lower court had ruled in the mother’s
favor. The Alabama Supreme Court
reversed the ruling, with then Chief
Justice Roy Moore writing in a
concurring opinion that a gay person
couldn’t be a fit parent.
“Homosexual conduct is, and has
been, considered abhorrent, immoral,
detestable, a crime against nature,
and a violation of the laws of nature
and of nature’s God upon which this
nation and our laws are predicated,”
wrote Moore. He added, “The state
carries the power of the sword, that
is, the power to prohibit conduct with
physical penalties, such as confine-
ment and even execution. It must use
that power to prevent the subversion
of children toward this lifestyle, to
not encourage a criminal lifestyle.”
The man who wrote those words
is now the Republican candidate for
the U.S. Senate from Alabama. In
some ways, this is an embarrassment
for Donald Trump, who heeded
establishment advice to support
Moore’s opponent, sitting Sen.
Luther Strange, in the primary. But
Moore’s victory is also a victory for
Trumpism, a populist movement that
has eroded normal limits on political
behavior.
On the surface, Trump and Moore
couldn’t be more different. The
president is a thrice-married former
casino owner who let Howard Stern
call his own daughter a “piece of
ass.” Moore is a fundamentalist
Southern Baptist who writes rhyming
verse denouncing wanton sex. “Your
children wander aimlessly poisoned
by cocaine/Choosing to indulge their
AP Photo/Brynn Anderson
Former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore
speaks during his election party Tuesday in Montgomery.
lusts, when God has said abstain,”
he wrote in his sarcastically titled
poem “America the Beautiful.”
Trump described himself, during his
campaign, as a “real friend” of the
LGBT community, even if he hasn’t
behaved like one in office. Moore has
said that gay sex should be illegal.
But read the rest of “America
the Beautiful,” and you start to see
where Trump and Moore’s world-
views overlap. Both see a nation in
apocalyptic decline, desperate for
redemption. Whereas Trump spoke
of “American carnage” in his dys-
topian inauguration speech, Moore
calls the country a “moral slum”
awaiting God’s judgment. Like the
president, Moore is a conspiracy
theorist who demonizes religious
minorities; he once wrote that Keith
Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota,
should not be allowed to serve in the
House of Representatives because he
is Muslim.
Moore’s
success
is bound to
encourage more
candidates
like him.
I met Moore over a decade ago,
when I was researching my first
book, “Kingdom Coming: The
Rise of Christian Nationalism.”
By then, Moore had been forced
off the bench for refusing a federal
judge’s order to remove a 2.6-ton
Ten Commandments monument he’d
installed in the state judicial building.
This martyrdom made him a cult
figure on the religious right. A group
of retired military men had taken the
monument on tour, holding over 150
viewings and rallies; at an event in
Austin, Texas, one of them spoke
bitterly to me about the outsized
power of American Jews. (Moore
would later be re-elected to his seat,
only to be suspended for the rest of
his term in 2016 for ordering judges
not to comply with the Supreme
Court decision overturning bans on
gay marriage.)
In trying to understand the
movement I was reporting on, I
turned to scholars of authoritarianism
and fascism. If their words seemed
relevant then, they’re even more so
now. Fritz Stern, a historian who fled
Nazi Germany, described the “con-
servative revolution” that prefigured
National Socialism: “The movement
did embody a paradox: its followers
sought to destroy the despised pres-
ent in order to recapture an idealized
past in an imaginary future.”
His formulation helps explain the
overlapping appeal of Trump and
Moore, who thrill their supporters
with their distinctly un-conservative
eagerness to destroy legal and
political norms. What Moore’s critics
see as lawlessness, his fans see as
insurgent valor. Trump’s most promi-
nent nationalist supporters, including
Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka,
lined up behind Moore, describing
him as part of the Trumpian revo-
lution. Nigel Farage, a right-wing
British politician and Trump ally,
flew to Fairhope, Alabama, to speak
at a rally for Moore, saying on stage,
“It is getting someone like him
elected that will rejuvenate the move-
ment that led to Trump and Brexit.”
Whether or not that’s true, the
movement that led to Trump has
brought us to a place where Moore
will probably soon sit in the U.S.
Senate, something I could hardly
have imagined when I first encoun-
tered him. Back then, anti-gay prej-
udice was far more acceptable than
it is today, but Moore’s messianic
denunciation of a lesbian mother was
still shocking. Trump is not a pious
man, but by destroying informal
restraints on reactionary rhetoric, he’s
made his party hospitable to the cru-
elest of theocrats. Moore’s success is
bound to encourage more candidates
like him. The Republican establish-
ment’s borders have been breached.
Its leaders should have built a wall.
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