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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (April 14, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Friday, April 14, 2017 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OUR VIEW Tip of the hat; kick in the pants A tip of the hat to area emergency dispatchers, in this National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week. We spotlighted a few of those dispatchers earlier this week in this newspaper. Their jobs are difficult, and the lives of Umatilla County residents often rely on their expertise and professionalism. Handling the stressful work of connecting people in need to proper services isn’t a task everyone is up for. These other-end-of-the-phone workers deserve as much credit as those on the front line, but the behind the scenes employees are not as apt to receive it. So the national week, celebrated in their honor, is a good time to recognize their contributions and say thank you. And of course, tip your hat. A kick in the pants to another day and another bomb dropped on a poor country far, far away. This one was the Mother Of All Bombs (yes, that’s it’s nickname, derived from Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or MOAB), which contained 11 tons of explosives and has a blast range a mile wide. It had never been used in combat before it was dropped Thursday in the middle of the Afghanistan desert to destroy underground bunkers. It seems strange that President Donald Trump, who ran on a slogan of “America First,” would drop a bomb that cost $314 million in such a forsaken corner of the world — and that on the heels of 59 Tomahawk missiles fired into Syria at a cost of about $60 million. The recent spate of bombings are an uncomfortable reminder that this country has been at war in Afghanistan for more than 15 years at a cost to American taxpayers of more than $3.6 trillion. More than 2,300 American soldiers have been killed and more than 20,000 wounded in that time. To what end, we still do not know. But for a president who routinely criticized the foreign policy mistakes of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Trump has disappointed in continuing to send money and mayhem abroad. This age of wonkery I f you were a certain sort of ideas- de Beauvoir or even Ralph Waldo oriented young person coming Emerson were writing, they were of age in the 20th century, it was hoping to radically change society, very likely you would give yourself but nobody would confuse them with a label and join some movement. policy wonks. You would call yourself a Marxist, Second, there was a greater sense a neoconservative, a Freudian, an then than now, I think, that the very existentialist or a New Deal liberal. nature of society was up for grabs. Call There would be certain sacred it a vestige from Marxism or maybe David writers who would explain the world to Brooks Christianity, but there was a sense that you — from Jung to Camus, Dewey or the current fallen order was fragile and Comment Chesterton. There would probably be a that a more just mode of living was out small magazine where the doctrines of there to be imagined. your sect would be hammered out. Finally, intellectual life was just seen People today seem less likely to give as more central to progress. Intellectuals themselves intellectual labels or join self- establish the criteria by which things are conscious philosophical movements. Young measured and goals are set. Intellectuals create people today seem more likely to have their the frameworks within which politicians worldviews shaped by trips they have taken, operate. How can you have a plan unless you or causes they have been are given a theory? Intellectuals involved in, or the racial or create the age. ethnic or gender identity Doing that sort of work group they identify with. meant leading the sort of That has changed the exceptional life that allowed you nature of the American to emerge from the cave — to intellectual scene, the way see truth squarely and to be fully people approach the world committed to the cause. Creating and the lives they live. a just society was the same thing In his book, “The Ideas Industry,” Daniel as transforming yourself into a moral person. W. Drezner says we have shifted from a For Orwell, this meant being with the poor landscape dominated by public intellectuals and the oppressed — living as a homeless to a world dominated by thought leaders. tramp in England, a dishwasher in Paris, A public intellectual is someone like Isaiah getting shot through the neck as a soldier Berlin, who is trained to comment on a wide in the Spanish Civil War. It meant teaching array of public concerns from a specific moral himself how to turn political writing into an stance. A thought leader champions one big art form. idea to improve the world — think Al Gore’s For Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, work on global warming. it meant committing fully to ideas, even As Drezner puts it, intellectuals are critical, if it meant years in prison, and doing the skeptical and tend to be pessimistic. Thought rigorous mental work required for a life of leaders are evangelists for their idea and tend hard thinking. He was as left as can be, but to be optimistic. The world of Davos-like he believed in traditional school curricula, the conferences, TED talks and PopTech rewards tough grinding of learning Latin and Greek thought leaders, not intellectuals, Drezner grammar. argues. “It will be necessary to resist the tendency Intellectual life has fallen out of favor for to render easy that which cannot become easy several reasons, he continues. In a low-trust without being distorted,” he wrote. era, people no longer have as much faith in It also meant joining a tradition and a team. grand intellectuals to serve as cultural arbiters. There were a whole set of moral tests involved In a polarized era, ideologically minded with obedience to the movement, breaking funders like George Soros or the Koch bothers ranks when necessary, facing unpleasant will only pay for certain styles of thought truths, pioneering a collective way of living, work. In an unequal era, rich people like to whether feminist, Marxist or libertarian. go to Big Idea conferences, and when they The 20th century held up intellectuals do they want to hear ideas that are going like that, and then discredited them — too to have some immediate impact — Jeffrey many were too wrong about communism and Sachs’ latest plan to end world poverty or Amy fascism. But we have probably over-adjusted Cuddy’s findings on how to adopt the right and deprived a generation of a vision of the power stance. heroic intellectual. It is good to have people Drezner does not call this a decline, just who think about North Korean disarmament. a shift (let us not underestimate how silly But politics is most real at a more essential and wrong some of the grand, sweeping level. intellectuals could be). But I am struck by how ■ people’s relationship to ideas has changed. David Brooks became a New York Times In the first place, public thinkers now Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He conceive of themselves as legislative advisers. has been a senior editor at The Weekly Drezner writes a book called “The Ideas Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek Industry,” but he is really writing about and the Atlantic Monthly, and is currently a public policy. When George Orwell, Simone commentator on PBS. Intellectual life has fallen out of favor. A tip of the hat to Rep. Greg Walden, a guy who hasn’t been getting much of that treatment lately. Walden, a Republican representative from Oregon’s largest and most conservative district, has been taking the brunt of his constituents’ anger at town hall meetings this week in The Dalles, Hood River and Bend. We saw a little of that discontent when he toured Eastern Oregon last month, but that was before key events like the total collapse of the Republicans’ health care bill (which Walden helped form) and the release of President Trump’s budget blueprint. Armed with these, his constituents have detailed attacks to launch at Walden when he takes the stage. Our tip to him is not for his role in crafting the DOA health care bill, but for being willing to stand in front of what quite closely resembles an angry mob and tell them not what they want to hear, but what he hopes to accomplish. That’s the hard part of politics, and is too easily avoided by many politicians. Whether you agree with Walden or not on any topic, you have to respect his willingness to face the music. Even if he has been dancing to some pretty questionable tunes recently. 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. The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our web- site. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@ eastoregonian.com. OTHER VIEWS YOUR VIEWS Would you like to buy Pendleton a bridge? Remember that great deal the city of Pendleton made on the road to nowhere? Well, now we get a bridge. Not the Brooklyn Bridge, but the Eighth Street Bridge, and its coming to a Main Street near you. This is a Downtown Business Association project paid for by, yeah, you guessed it, you lucky taxpayers courtesy of your county commissioners, those guys who promised to quit frittering away money because they don’t have the projected revenue to balance the next budget; and the Pendleton development commission. You know those guys better as your friends, the city council. They did manage to get a substantial donation to help, but not enough to complete the project. So, that money you planned to spend at JC Penney? Send it to the city because they really need the help. The big question is, whose names are going to be on the plaque? Poor old Bob Patterson has a plethora of street projects stymied by the harsh winter weather. His failure to follow proper disposition procedures for that historic Eighth Street Bridge has stopped the replacement project for a year. Remember the old saying, “time is money?” Want to bet the price of the bridge project just went up? Remember before that utility tax, we had less $400,000 a year left of our share of state and federal gas tax money to spend on street maintenance and repair? There was simply no additional money available. Well, guess what! The city has decided to buy a $395,000 building up at the airport. A building they previously owned. It’s amazing how easily they find money when it fits their agenda. Meanwhile, the old police station sits empty. Looks like we’re going to get another building to maintain. So much for our number one priority of infrastructure maintenance and repair. Guess I’m still missing the “big picture.” Rick Rohde Pendleton Fire station important city infrastructure The proposed new fire station is one important piece in upgrading Pendleton’s infrastructure. As others have noted, the existing station is more than half a century old, and does not meet basic industry standards. In addition, the new facility will reduce operating costs and improve services. My hope is that the citizens of Pendleton will step forward and make this happen in the same way that we have supported improvements to our local schools. For these reasons, I will be voting for Measure 30-124 to provide funding to move forward with this project. Dan Haug Pendleton Trump will cause a rural labor shortage The U.S. House did not provide a lot of surprises this month — 40 bills got through, three to the president for signature, three were quickly signed into law and the balance are in the Senate waiting for action. More notable are the actions that failed. This delusional, minority president is an embarrassment to his party. Twice his Muslim ban failed because our Constitution still provides “freedom of religion.” As a nation that welcomes diversity, religious prejudice is unacceptable. Although our Rep. Walden championed Trump’s tax avoidance scheme referred to as “Trumpcare” and would repeal ACA, it found no support in the legislature and was canceled. Rep. Walden has a large constituency of ACA voters and would have lost health care coverage. Trump’s “white supremacy” attitude and policy of deporting Latinos has resulted in a severe labor shortage in the construction industry with supply not meeting demand and new housing prices being consequentially increased. Latinos who have been U.S. residents for decades are fearful of leaving their homes, they have been targeted, deported and families separated. Labor shortage in agriculture and the food supply will be next. While Trump’s executive orders and tweets have inspired fear and confusion, his shell is beginning to show signs of cracking. This delusional, minority president is still entangled in claims of Russian collaboration. Contact your representative and let him know you are a concerned voter. As a retired Hermiston School District/Rocky Heights teacher, I am writing in support of the upcoming school district bond. As we all know, our community has grown incredibly in the past decade and our schools are not able to accommodate all of our children. We now have 34 portable modulars and at the rate estimated, we will have to add another 46 during the next six years. Our district is working hard to keep classroom numbers down but our lack of facilities makes this goal difficult. Having children housed in portable modulars separate from the school building impacts actual classroom time spent on task and also child safety as students walk back and forth to the main building several times a day. Additionally, my own grandson’s elementary lunch program must begin serving K-5 lunches by 10:30 a.m. and serve well past noon in order to provide all students an opportunity to eat in his overcrowded school. Please join me in support of the HSD bond measure. David Ebbert Enterprise Francie Hansell Hermiston Hermiston can’t rely on modular classrooms