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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.