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OPINION
East Oregonian
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Publisher
Managing Editor
JENNINE PERKINSON
TIM TRAINOR
Advertising Director
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
No stopping
Canyon Creek
catastrophe
precipitated by one of the worst
On Sunday, The Oregonian
ire seasons in the Northwest. It
distributed a special 20 page report,
became a damaging, devastating ire
the culmination of a year-long
investigation into the Canyon Creek because of a freaky and terrifying
convergence of natural events, irst
Fire. That ire destroyed 43 homes
the lightning strikes and secondly
and nearly 100 other structures on
the hot weather and then the cherry
August 14, 2015 near the town of
on top: high winds
Canyon City in
blowing the exact
Grant County.
It was a
The ire became direction of Canyon
Creek. That made
journalistic endeavor
devastating
the canyon act like
that produced a
a lue, which stoked
fascinating product.
because of a
the inferno beyond
Two reporters for
lack of resources any ability to ight it.
the newspaper,
Yet we’re happy
Laura Gunderson
and a freaky
The Oregonian
and Ted Sickinger,
spent nearly a year
convergence of invested time and
into the
digging through
natural events. resources
investigation, even
documents,
if they came to a
conducting
different conclusion.
interviews and
questioning the U.S. Forest Service’s It’s important for the people of Grant
County, who feel like they are being
initial response to the small,
attacked by the government and to
lightning-caused ires that two days
some extent the media, to have an
later united into a conlagration that
organization deeply investigate an
could not be stopped.
issue important to them. No matter
Perhaps the most confounding
your takeaway from the project,
part of the story is the aftermath.
Gunderson and Sickinger dug and
Burned yet valuable timber from
dug, and unearthed information
government lands received priority
Grant County citizens wouldn’t have
in local mills, leaving private
landowners high and dry. Those tree seen any other way. That’s valuable,
farmers, who counted on the revenue as is the threat that future decisions
by the USFS or another government
from their lumber stands, can now
only watch as millions of dollars rot agency may be vetted just as
carefully.
on the ground because mills from
There are lessons to be learned
John Day to Pilot Rock are dealing
from the Canyon Creek Fire. The
with a glut of logs caused by last
USFS has admitted it would have
year’s disastrous ire season. Yet if
fought the Berry Creek and Mason
the logs languished on government
Spring ires differently, knowing
land, we imagine a similar uproar
how it turned out. That’s the beneit
over waste of taxpayer dollars and
of hindsight. Sometimes you play
resources.
The Oregonian report did nothing the odds and lose, and both the
Forest Service and the people of
to change our opinion about the
Grant County lost last August.
ire. Our own Tim Trainor was on
On a larger scale, state and
the ground in Canyon City while
federal agencies must rethink their
lodgepole pines were still smoking,
strategy and philosophy for ighting
and wrote some of the irst stories
ire, as well as its management of
documenting the Forest Service’s
Oregon’s valuable and vulnerable
initial response to both the Berry
forests. It must get better. Lives and
Creek and Mason Spring blazes.
livelihoods are at stake.
The Blue Mountain Eagle, our
This year’s ire season has
sister paper in John Day, has also
been much more manageable, and
documented the response and given
therefore has been better managed.
voice to those who think it was
lacking. That publication produced a But it won’t be long until another
dangerous ire is growing in
lengthy look back just this week.
intensity outside a rural Oregon
In our opinion, the devastating
town, and the stakes will be high
and tragic conlagration was caused
once again.
by a region-wide lack of resources
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher
Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
OTHER VIEWS
Tell the state its transport troubles
The Bend Bulletin
A public hearing on state
transportation is this week. Money is
limited. Choices must be made. What
should the state priorities be?
You’ll get a chance to tell state
decision-makers what you think.
Some advocates want Oregonians
out of their cars. In their view, the state’s
priority should be to discourage cars
and promote alternatives, such as buses,
trains, biking and walking. The state
already has rules, policies and directives
intended to reduce driving and make
parking more challenging. Some want
more. Is that what you want?
Others call for a focus on social
equity. In other words, their aim is to
ensure everyone has access to affordable
transportation options.
We’d argue the state should focus
irst on ensuring what it has gets ixed.
OTHER VIEWS
The pull of racial patronage
T
hink of a Donald Trump voter,
white,” to borrow from historian Ira
the kind that various studies
Katznelson, lifting white workers at
have identiied as his archetypal
the expense of African-Americans.
backer: a white man without a
Then decades later, liberalism
college education living in a region
moved to create afirmative action
experiencing economic distress.
programs to help those same African-
What do you see? A new “forgotten
Americans. This was redress and
expiation, but it was also another form
man,” ignored by elites in both parties,
of patronage: a promise of a hand
suffering through socioeconomic
Ross
dislocations, and turning to Trump
Douthat up, a race-based advantage that only
liberalism would provide.
because he seems willing to put the
Comment
With time, that promise was
working class irst? Or a resentful
extended to groups with weaker
white bigot, lashing back against the
claims to redress than the descendants of
transformation of America by rallying around
American slaves, even as mass immigration
a candidate who promises to make America
expanded the potential pool of beneiciaries.
safe for racism once again?
Eventually, we ended
You’re allowed to answer
up with a liberalism
“both, depending.” But
that favors permanent
where to lay the emphasis
preferences for minority
has divided liberals and
groups, permanently large
conservatives against one
immigration lows — plus
another.
welfare programs that recent
Conservatives who are
immigrants are more likely
generally happy with the
than native-born Americans
Republican Party’s status
to use.
quo, the mix of policies that
This combination is
Trump has ranged himself
(mostly) rooted in idealism.
against, have stressed his
But it still amounts to a
voters’ baser proclivities and
system of ethnic patronage,
passions, dismissing them as
which white Americans who are neither
bigots who are really the authors of their own
well-off nor poor enough to be on Medicaid
unhappy fates.
see as particularly biased against them.
Conservatives who favor a populist shift
This constituency, the gainfully employed
in how the GOP approaches issues like taxes
but insecure lower middle class, is the
or transfer programs have stressed the ways
Trumpian core. By embracing white identity
in which Reaganite Republicanism has failed
the working class, while urging a conservative politics, they’re being bigoted but also, in their
own eyes, imitative: Trump’s protectionist
politics of solidarity that borrows at least
argle-bargle boils down to a desire to once
something from the wreck of Trumpism.
again have policies that speciically beneit
Likewise on the left: The more content
lower-middle-class whites — welfare for
you are with a liberalism in which social
issues provide most of the Democratic Party’s legacy industries and afirmative action for
white men.
energy, the more likely you’ll be to crack
This crude attempt at imitation,
wise on Twitter — “a lot of economic anxiety
unfortunately, is part of a very common
here!” — every time Trump or one of his
hangers-on or supporters makes a xenophobic iterative cycle in politics. It’s a reason why, in
multiethnic societies, multiracial parties are
foray.
the exception rather than the rule.
Alternatively, the more you favor a
And breaking that cycle won’t be easy
left-wing politics that stresses economic forces
for either party. The activist energy on the
above all else, the more you’ll cast Trump’s
left is pushing for a more ethnically focused
blue collar support as the bitter fruit of the
politics, devoted to righting structural race-
Democratic Party’s turn to neoliberalism,
based wrongs. That energy will be blunted
and argue that social democracy rather than
temporarily by the light of well-educated
shaming and shunning is the cure for right-
whites from Trump, but the absence of
wing populism.
economic common ground between Hillary
My sympathies are with the second group
Clinton-voting white moderates and the
in both debates — as a partisan of a more
party’s poorer, minority base means that her
solidaristic conservatism, and as an outsider
temporary coalition is likely to fracture irst
who prefers the old left’s class politics to the
along racial lines.
pseudo-cosmopolitanism of elite liberalism
That fracturing will help the GOP
today.
recover, but it won’t help Republicans build
But it’s also important for partisans of
a pan-racial conservatism. The pull of white
socioeconomic solidarity, whether right
identity politics can be overcome, but only
wing or left wing, to recognize that racial
with great effort. Not least because it requires
and economic grievances can’t always
not only that conservatism change, but that
be separated, and that a politics of ethnic
competition is an unfortunately common state minority voters be persuaded that the change
is meaningful.
of political affairs.
And after Trump, what forgiveness?
Consider the trajectory of liberalism.
■
In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt’s New
Ross Douthat joined The New York
Deal deliberately excluded blacks from
Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009.
certain beneits and job programs. This was
Previously, he was a senior editor at the
discrimination, but it was also patronage:
Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com.
It was a time when “afirmative action was
In multiethnic
societies,
multiracial
parties are the
exception rather
than the rule.
State roads and bridges need repairs. It’s
a basic and fundamental investment in
keeping Oregon competitive. So much
of Oregon’s economy relies on being
able to export goods, and the state can’t
count on the federal government to ix
the problems.
Rough pavement means Oregonians
must spend more on repairs to vehicles
and tires. As much as two-thirds of
the state’s bridges need work. Without
improvements come weight restrictions
and truck detours. That can create
congestion and incentives for companies
to move elsewhere.
Seismic retroits can also be smart
investments. We don’t know if the
numbers are right, but before the
2015 legislative session, the Oregon
Department of Transportation said
the state needed some $5.1 billion to
prevent major bridge collapses.
Keep the state’s focus on ixing.
YOUR VIEWS
Bothum should win bid
for EOTEC rodeo grounds
Since David Bothum was the low
bidder, and could obtain any missing
credentials, I think he should be awarded
the bid for the Eastern Oregon Trade
& Event Center rodeo grounds. Design
changes could be made so that the bid
would come in at budget.
Mr. Bothum has given thousands
of hours of his time and skills to make
the Farm-City Pro Rodeo a success.
Awarding him this bid would be a
ine way to say thank you from our
community.
Mike Mehren
Hermiston
LETTERS POLICY
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public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. Submitted letters
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