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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 6, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, July 6, 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 OTHER VIEWS Staff photo by Kathy Aney Vietnam veteran and retired East Oregonian managing editor Skip Nichols reads a story he wrote during a writing workshop for veterans with PTSD. He and five other veterans shared their work last week in Walla Walla. What’s the matter with Republicans? Support their stories O Lip service is easy, especially for popular causes. For the past 40 years or so, since the days of misdirected anger toward our veterans coming home from the Vietnam War, our country has gladly rallied around the mantra “Support Our Troops.” It’s been on bumper stickers and spoken loudly in campaigns, and even those against our wars generally offer their thanks to the men and women who serve. And yet, those words alone offer little actual support. There’s also been a social movement to pay for a cup of coffee, a beer, a meal or a bag of groceries for veterans and active service members spotted in public. It’s tangible gratitude that requires putting money where your mouth is, and a step in the right direction. But there’s a lot more to supporting our armed forces than offering a pat on the back or to pick up a tab. At the Red Badge Project reading in Walla Walla last week, the group’s co-founder Warren Etheredge summed up the group’s mission as two-fold. For veterans, it is a place to explore and work through their painful memories and experiences in a safe setting. Rather than wrestling with the trauma alone, they bring it to a group that understands where they’re coming from. For non-veterans, Etheredge had a simple suggestion, a step further than lip service — to support their stories. Listen and try to understand to the psychic toll carried by these men and women. The veterans at Friday’s reading told their stories of killing and suicide and fear and loss, and of the difficulty of coping with life after war. They shared their personal demons with a crowd of strangers. It was both heartbreaking and illuminating. Hearing the stories took no sliver of courage compared to what the veterans showed by standing on that stage. But being willing to listen, to reckon with the toll of war and what follows, gave the audience a window into what true support looks like. The suicide rate for veterans is unacceptable, and was a common theme through the evening. One speaker called it the dirtiest word of all in politically correct culture. The Red Badge Project helps veterans find a purpose from the pain that a prescription can’t provide. Whether in the structure of Red Badge or in an everyday interaction, hearing the stories of our veterans can offer both healing for them and understanding for the rest of us. 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 How to respond to Trump request for state voter records The (Eugene) Register Guard D onald Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity brings to mind the joke about a man who stood on a street corner snapping his fingers. A passer-by asked him what he was doing. “Keeping the rhinoceroses away,” the man explained. There aren’t any rhinoceroses around here, the passerby said. “See?” the man answered. “It’s working.” The voter integrity commission is snapping its fingers, demanding that state elections officials provide data on 200 million voters — names, party affiliations, birth dates, criminal records, voting histories and partial Social Security numbers. The commission is looking for the rhinoceros that President Trump claims denied him a popular-vote victory in the 2016 elections: massive voter fraud. Elections officials in at least 22 states have said they cannot or will not comply with the demand for information. One of the more embarrassing refusals came from Kansas, whose secretary of state, Kris Kobach, is vice chairman of the commission. Privacy laws in Kansas prevent the disclosure of some of the information the commission requested. The refusals are bipartisan: Democrat-led states such as California and Massachusetts rejected the request, while Mississippi’s Republican secretary of state said commission members “can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico.” A more measured response came from Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, a Republican. Richardson took the opportunity to explain the benefits of Oregon’s vote-by-mail and automatic voter registration systems, which result in high participation and low fraud rates. He said that 15 people have been indicted or convicted of voter fraud since 2000 — fewer than one per year. Richardson then offered to send the commission the same voter information that is available to anyone upon receipt of the standard $500 fee. He said state law prevents him from providing personal information as driver’s license or Social Security numbers. He then warned that it would be a crime to use the data for commercial purposes. This is the proper response: The commission deserves no better and no worse treatment than any other party. Voter information that is a matter of public record should be provided promptly and at a reasonable cost. Information that is protected by privacy laws should be guarded. The commission hopes to gather all this information so that it can be compared to other federal databases, such as lists of non-citizen residents and undocumented immigrants who have been arrested. Trump’s expectation is that many matches would be found: “What are they hiding?” Trump tweeted Saturday after he was informed that many states would not grant the commission’s request for information. Critics of the commission believe that its findings, no matter what they are, will be used to justify efforts to make it harder to register to vote and to cast a ballot — restrictions that tend to suppress participation by low-income and minority voters who are likely to be Democrats. But Trump is more than a garden-variety seeker of partisan advantage. He believes there can be no explanation other than fraud for his defeat in the popular vote. The rhinoceroses must be kept at bay. ver the past two months the They are the personal sins — laziness, Trump administration and self-indulgence, drinking, sleeping the Republicans in Congress around. have proposed a budget and two Then as now, chaos is always health care plans that would take washing up against the door. Very benefits away from core Republican few people actually live up to the constituencies, especially working- code of self-discipline that they class voters. And yet over this time preach. A single night of gambling Donald Trump’s approval rating has or whatever can produce life-altering David remained unchanged, at 40 percent. Brooks bad choices. Moreover, the forces of During this period the Republicans social disruption are visible on every Comment have successfully defended a series of street: the slackers taking advantage congressional seats. of the disability programs, the people What’s going on? Why do working-class popping out babies, the drug users, the spouse conservatives seem to vote so often against abusers. their own economic interests? Voters in these places could use some help. My stab at an answer would begin in But these Americans, like most Americans, the 18th and 19th centuries. Many Trump vote on the basis of their vision of what makes supporters live in places that once were on a great nation. These voters, like most voters, the edge of the American believe that the values of the frontier. Life on that frontier people are the health of the was fragile, perilous, nation. lonely and remorseless. If In their view, government a single slip could produce doesn’t reinforce the disaster, then discipline and vigorous virtues. On the self-reliance were essential. contrary, it undermines them The basic pattern of life was — by fostering initiative- an underlying condition of sucking dependency, by peril, warded off by an ethos letting people get away with of self-restraint, temperance, their mistakes so they can self-control and strictness of make more of them and by conscience. getting in the way of moral Frontier towns sometimes formation. went from boomtown to The only way you build Bible Belt in a single leap. up self-reliant virtues, in this They started out lawless. view, is through struggle. People needed to impose Yet faraway government codes of respectability to experts want to cushion survive. Frontier religions were often ascetic, people from the hardships that are the schools banning drinking, card-playing and dancing. of self-reliance. Compassionate government And yet there was always a whiff of extreme threatens to turn people into snowflakes. disorder — drunkenness, violence and fraud In her book “Strangers in Their Own — threatening from down below. Land,” sociologist Arlie Hochschild quotes a Today these places are no longer frontier woman from Louisiana complaining about the towns, but many of them still exist on the childproof lids on medicine and the mandatory same knife’s edge between traditionalist order seat-belt laws. “We let them throw lawn darts, and extreme dissolution. smoked alongside them,” the woman says of For example, I have a friend who is an her children. “And they survived. Now it’s avid Trump admirer. He supports himself as like your kid needs a helmet, knee pads and a part-time bartender and a part-time home elbow pads to go down the kiddy slide.” contractor, and by doing various odd jobs on Hochschild’s humble and important the side. A good chunk of his income is off book is a meditation on why working-class the books. He has built up a decent savings conservatives vote against more government account, but he has done it on his own, programs for themselves. She emphasizes hustling, scrapping his way, without any long- that they perceive government as a corrupt term security. His income can vary sharply arm used against the little guy. She argues that from week to week. He doesn’t have much these voters may vote against their economic trust in the institutions around him. He has interests, but they vote for their emotional worked on government construction projects interests, for candidates who share their but sees himself, rightly, as a small-business emotions about problems and groups. man. I’d say they believe that big government This isn’t too different from the hard, support would provide short-term assistance, independent life on the frontier. Many people but it would be a long-term poison to the in these places tend to see their communities values that are at the core of prosperity. You the way foreign policy realists see the world: and I might disagree with that theory. But it’s as an unvarnished struggle for resources — as a plausible theory. Anybody who wants to a tough world, a no-illusions world, a world design policies to help the working class has where conflict is built into the fabric of reality. to make sure they go along the grain of the The virtues most admired in such places, vigorous virtues, not against them. then and now, are what Shirley Robin Letwin ■ once called the vigorous virtues: “upright, David Brooks became a New York Times self-sufficient, energetic, adventurous, Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He independent minded, loyal to friends and has been a senior editor at The Weekly robust against foes.” Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek The sins that can cause the most trouble are and the Atlantic Monthly, and is currently a not the social sins — injustice, incivility, etc. commentator on PBS. Many people see their communities as the way foreign policy realists see the world: as an unvarnished struggle for resources.
