VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, March 21, 2015
By ALEX CARR JOHNSON
Writers on the Range
Statue decorations
— Jennifer Bush
If it was your ancestor would you still
be amused? Have some respect. The statues
were erected to honor these icons that made
history at the world-renowned Pendleton
Round-Up. Show the statues the well de-
served respect they earned.
— Etta Conner
Apparently no one in Pendleton has a
sense of humor? It’s done in good spirit
— not to be malicious. They’re costumes,
they’re taken down after a holiday. No one’s
tagging it or causing permanent damage.
— Alex C. Thompson
My kids love seeing it decorated! They
get a good giggle every time.
— Chantell Reid
People should leave the statues alone,
First impression is it’s tacky and tasteless.
— Stephenie Barkley
It is vandalism and vandalism is illegal.
This is defacement of public property.
— W.d. Coe
If offended then go take it off. I’m Native
and I wore green decorations, lol!
—Rhonda Scott
Why not dress up the madam? She may
enjoy it.
— Flora Estrada-Urias
One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is
that much can be summed up in just a few words.
Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours
@Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian.
com, and keep them to 140 characters.
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his past fall, my friend Lauren asked
me to speak to an English class she
teaches at a small alternative school
in western Colorado. She was encouraging
these juniors and seniors to write a personal
manifesto, and after hearing that I had
created one myself a few years ago, she
thought I’d be a perfect guest lecturer.
But here’s the thing: My manifesto
challenges assumptions of sexuality and
gender and what passes for normal, and
Lauren and I live in a rural town that, rumor
has it, once had the world record for the
highest number of churches per capita. It’s
the kind of place where some people mine
coal while others grow hay, and a lot of
people hunt elk and wear cowboy boots.
I try not to stereotype people based on
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big beard and wear cowboy boots, too. But
I know this community, and large segments
of it are conservative and overwhelmingly
Republican. One of the most prominent
signs as you enter town is actually a trailer
spray-painted with “Frack Obama.”
The class consisted of six stone-faced
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others cross-armed behind hoodies. I started
the class with a writing prompt:
“Why are you angry? All the reasons big
and small — why are you angry? Make a
list or not. Offer an explanation, or not. Why
are you angry?”
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wrote furiously, I then asked:
“If you had total power — superhero
power — choose one thing you are mad
about and explain how you would change it,
and why.”
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them and said: “This is a frustrating task,
I know. You and I know that we don’t live
Trillion-dollar fraudsters
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Page 5A
A manifesto can set you free
Quick takes
There are much bigger problems in the
world. It’s completely harmless. It’s a life-
less object. I’m pretty sure the statue could
care less.
East Oregonian
y now it’s a Republican
in the Affordable Care Act? Actual
Party Tradition: Every year
spending is coming in well below
the party produces a budget
expectations, and the Congressional
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forecast for the next decade down
but which turns out to contain a
by 20 percent. Remember the
trillion-dollar “magic asterisk” — a
jeering when President Barack
line that promises huge spending
Obama declared that he would
cuts and/or revenue increases,
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but without explaining where the
Paul
money is supposed to come from.
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economy delayed things, but only
But the just-released budgets
Comment
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from the House and Senate
2013 was less than half its 2009
majorities break new ground.
level, and it has continued to fall.
Each contains not one but two trillion-
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dollar magic asterisks: one on spending,
neither historically normal nor bipartisan.
one on revenue. And that’s actually an
It’s a modern Republican thing. And the
understatement. If either budget were to
question we should ask is why.
become law, it would leave the federal
One answer you sometimes hear is
government several trillion dollars deeper
that what Republicans really believe is
in debt than claimed, and that’s just in the
that tax cuts for the rich would generate
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a huge boom and a surge in revenue, but
You might be tempted to shrug this
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off, since these budgets will not, in fact,
such claims credible. So magic asterisks
become law. Or you might say that this
are really stand-ins for their belief in the
is what all politicians do. But it isn’t. The
magic of supply-side economics, a belief
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that remains intact even though proponents
something new in American politics. And
that’s telling us something important about in that doctrine have been wrong about
everything for decades.
what has happened to half of our political
But I’m partial to a more cynical
spectrum.
explanation. Think about what these
So, about those budgets: Both claim
budgets would do if you ignore the
drastic reductions in federal spending.
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Some of those spending reductions are
cuts and revenue enhancements. What
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you’re left with is huge transfers of income
in food stamps, similarly savage cuts
from the poor and the working class,
in Medicaid over and above reversing
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the recent expansion, and an end to
rich, who would see big tax cuts. And the
Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies.
simplest way to understand these budgets
Rough estimates suggest that either plan
is surely to suppose that they are intended
would roughly double the number of
to do what they would, in fact, actually do:
Americans without health insurance. But
both also claim more than a trillion dollars
make the rich richer and ordinary families
in further cuts to mandatory spending,
poorer.
which would almost surely have to come
But this is, of course, not a policy
out of Medicare or Social Security. What
direction the public would support if it
form would these further cuts take? We get were clearly explained. So the budgets
no hint.
must be sold as courageous efforts to
It’s very important to realize that this
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isn’t normal political behavior. The George — which means that they must include
W. Bush administration was no slouch
trillions in imaginary, unexplained savings.
when it came to deceptive presentation
Look, I know that it’s hard to keep up
of tax plans, but it was never this blatant.
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And the Obama administration has
fraudulence. But please try. We’re looking
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at an enormous, destructive con job, and
pronouncements.
you should be very, very angry.
OK, I can already hear the snickering,
Ŷ
but it’s the simple truth. Remember all the
Paul Krugman joined The New York
ridicule heaped on the spending projections Times in 1999.
in a world where we have total power. We
never will. So what’s the point of thinking
about the ‘if’? It seems pointless to even
contemplate.
“But even though we will never be
superheroes,” I went on, “we still have
power to change the world. You can
transform your anger
into something that can
convince people to make
the change you wish to
see. Convincing isn’t
enough, though. You must
also inspire people, too.
“That is your
manifesto.”
We spent the next 15
minutes talking about
two manifestos, with
one being the collective
works of Subcomandante
Marcos, the public
voice for the Zapatista
indigenous rights
movement of southern
Mexico. For the last
20 years, Marcos has
been informing the larger global audience
about the struggles of the Zapatistas and
the reasons why they continue to insist on
autonomy from the Mexican government.
The Zapatistas offer many lessons for
largely peaceful social change movements,
but Marcos, in particular, offers an
example of someone writing from a place
of immense anger in an elegant and even
entertaining way. He convinces and inspires
people who live far away as well as people
already part of the Zapatista movement.
The second manifesto I offered as an
example was Larry Kramer’s “1,112 and
Counting.” Kramer was a gay man living
in New York City during the height of the
AIDS epidemic. He saw his friends and
family die all around him, while the city,
state and nation did nothing to halt the
deaths. He transformed his anger into a
biting critique published in a publication
called the New York Native on March 14,
1983. It helped inspire the gay community
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disease and a medical and political
establishment that wasn’t taking action fast
enough.
With a few minutes
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the high school boys why
I was angry. As an “out”
gay man, I was angry
that people claimed gay
people were “unnatural.”
I stood at the center of
the room and read my
manifesto, “How to queer
ecology,” to the class. It
talked about same-sex
pair-bonded geese and
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of dolphins. And it also
described how natural
it feels for me to love
another man. Despite
being out for the last 12
years, and married for the last two, it’s still
just a little bit terrifying to say these things
out loud.
At the end of the hour, I thanked them
for letting me join them for the day. That’s
when Lauren and the boys began clapping.
They clapped! And so, here’s another thing
about writing your manifesto: If you can
muster the courage to look into the face of
your anger and own it, and if you can then
transform that anger into a story that can
move other people, you will have found
your voice, and you will know what you
need to do.
Ŷ
Alex Carr Johnson is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a column service
of High Country News. He is a freelance
writer in western Colorado.
If you can
muster the
courage to look
into the face of
your anger and
own it, you will
have found your
voice and what
you need to do.
The zero-sum moment
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ational elections take place
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moment. Progressives emphasize
moment. In the 1990s,
compassion less and redistribution
there was a presumption that we
more. Conservatives emphasize
were living in an age of rapid
entrepreneurial dynamism less and
progress. Democracy was spreading.
the threat of government elites more.
Tyranny was receding. Asia was
Electorates get a little uglier when
booming. The European Union was
faith in progress declines. Voters
David
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across the spectrum get more cynical
Brooks and distrustful. They are quicker to
East was lessening. The world was
Comment
cumulatively heading toward greater
perceive threats from The Other.
pluralism, individualism, prosperity
It’s rare to have major
and freedom.
realignments at a moment like this.
Today it’s harder to have faith in
Everybody is hunkered down and risk
rapid progress. Democracy is receding.
averse. Voters in this battened-down frame
Autocrats like Vladimir Putin of Russia are
of mind are willing to elect familiar faces
marching. The European project is decaying. (better the devil you know). The Israeli,
Economies are struggling. Reactionary
American and European electorates have
forces like the Islamic State and Iran are
been remarkably stable over the past decade.
winning. The Middle East is deteriorating.
In Israel, for example, the overall vote that
In this climate, the tone and focus of
went to right-wing parties was stable from
politics changes. Politics is less about win-
this election to last; it’s just that the Likud
win situations and more about zero-sum
Party grabbed a big share of the nationalist
situations.
electorate.
It is less about reforms that will improve
Still, you do see some shifts. Extreme
all lives and more about unadorned struggles parties rise, especially the ones that repel
for power. Who will control the ground in
supposed interlopers and oppose elite global
places like Ukraine and Syria? Will Iran
projects. We’re seeing that across the globe
get the bomb? Will the White House or
with the Tea Party, UKIP in Britain, National
Congress grab power over treaties and
Front on the right in France and Syriza on
immigration policy?
the left in Greece.
At these moments, tough guys do well.
Extreme parties rarely take power,
Cooperative skills are less valued while
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confrontational skills are more valued.
mainstream politicians have to co-opt them.
Benjamin Netanyahu wins re-election in
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Israel. The pugnacious Nicolas Sarkozy, of
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all people, is staging a comeback in France.
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Putin is in his element.
to silence, co-opt and crush the extremists on
Barack Obama started out as a hope-
their own side.
and-change idealist, but he has had to
This is what Netanyahu did in Israel.
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He didn’t literally renounce the idea of a
the paradigmatic leader of the age: shrewd,
two-state solution forevermore. He just said
unemotional, nonidealistic, austere and
that it would be too dangerous in the near
interested in power. As John Kornblum,
term as long as Islamist-style radicalism is
the former U.S. ambassador to Germany,
on the march. (A defensible proposition.)
told George Packer of The New Yorker: “If
Still, these comments and the ones on Israeli
you cross her you end up dead. ... There’s a
Arabs were blatant panders. He took Knesset
whole list of alpha males who thought they
seats away from parties to his right by
would get her out of the way, and they’re all
becoming more like them.
now in other walks of life.”
In general, the power of the cultural
In these moments, right-leaning parties
moment shapes the candidates. But
tend to do well and have a stronger story
occasionally there is a leader who can turn a
to tell on national security. They speak
negative popular mood into a positive one.
the language of nationalism and cultural
FDR and Reagan did this. But you have to
cohesion. People who are economically
be very, very good.
insecure (and more likely to lean left) drop
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out of the political process.
David Brooks became a New York Times
Both parties, though, change shape to
Op-Ed columnist in September 2003.