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Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, September 30, 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 EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com OUR VIEW Oh say can you see? Last week, President Donald of, and what we must defend. The Trump shoved the National Football aspect of forced patriotism — you must stand, you must sing, you must League and its players into the remove your hat and hold your hand spotlight. That’s normally a place a over your heart — are being vastly private enterprise would love to be, but this president’s spotlight is often overlooked by the “patriot” crowd. It should be an honor to stand for too hot and too harsh. the flag, not a requirement. It should Trump’s comments about what not be a meaningless gesture, done should be done to any athlete using without thought or purpose. the national anthem as a protest The places in the platform — they world where it is a should be out of a It is a critical mandatory exercise job, put decently — are the very opposite has been what most moment to Americans have remember the of America. The NFL has been talking about backed themselves for the past week. ideals that make into this tight spot. And as you sit down this a nation to For decades, the to watch sports this weekend (or choose league has (often be proud of. to take a stand cynically) worked and not watch), to equate itself with consider that sparking a futile debate America and the U.S. military. That may very well have been President includes flag-waving before, during Trump’s goal. Discussing kneeling, and after games, military salutes, the anthem, Black Lives Matter and fly overs and fatigue-clad military the American military was a fake months. Many other sporting events do it handoff — a reverse, a flea flicker, a too — NASCAR and the Round-Up Statue of Liberty, if you will. It was have made their events a sort of faux action on one part of the field meant to distract from the real action communal celebration of patriotism as much they are about a car race or happening on the other side. a rodeo. Do you remember that just last This is all good for business: week 21 states admitted their voting It helps ratings and helps systems were hacked by Russians ingratiate football as a nationwide in the run-up to the 2016 election? endeavor — America’s sport. But That Republican attempts to repeal it does, however, entangle a private Obamacare failed for a third time? enterprise with patriotism. And when That almost all of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 an employee of the NFL wants to million residents remain without protest against police brutality, it power? By and large, we don’t, and we’re gets tied up as an assault against America, our symbols and our instead writing about the NFL and the American flag. Trump is a master military. We love sports, and see their media manipulator, and he has us usefulness as a safe retreat from chasing the rabbit again. the complexities and divisions of But as long as we’re on the everyday life. But the spotlight of subject, we do think the concept of politics is shining everywhere these patriotism is important, especially days, and don’t be surprised if your at a moment when many of our democratic institutions and ideals are industry, your union, your ethnicity, shifting radically and our allegiances your religion, your family is soon labeled by the president as bunch of are under fire. SOBs. It is critical — now more than What then, is the patriotic ever — to remember the ideals response? that made this a nation to be proud 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 More logging will not reduce forest fires By GEORGE WUERTHNER M any people believe if we only logged more forests, we could reduce or halt most large wildfires. It may seem intuitive that if you reduce fuels, you will have fewer large fires. It’s intuitive that the sun circles the earth since any fool can see it rises in the east and sets in the west. Yet, we all know that the earth circles the sun even though it would seem obvious that the sun is circling the earth. Climate/weather drive large wildfires — not fuels. That is why even though there is more biomass on the Oregon Coast, those forests seldom burn. The reason? Because it’s too moist and cool. On the other hand, a lot of research has found that if you have extreme fire weather, which includes drought, low humidity, high temperatures and most importantly, wind, you can’t stop fires. These are the very conditions that have existed with all large wildfires from the Canyon Creek blaze in Grant County to the Eagle Creek Fire by the Columbia Gorge. Why is this important? Because 95-98 percent of all fires are easily suppressed or more likely simply self-extinguish because the weather isn’t conducive to fire spread. But a very small percentage of fires occur during extreme fire weather conditions, and these are impossible to control. And these very few large fires are responsible for 95-99 percent of all the acreage burned in any summer. Under these extreme weather conditions, fire burns through clearcuts, thinned forests, and prescribed burn areas. Nothing stops them. For instance, the Eagle Creek fire jumped the Columbia River. Talk about a fuel break — there is nothing there but water, but it couldn’t stop fire being driven by 40-50 mph winds. Worse for the proposed solution of more logging, recent studies have found that fire severity is higher in “actively managed” forests. For instance, here are the conclusions of a number of recent review studies. Researchers at the Forest Service fire lab in Missoula concluded: “Extreme environmental conditions ... overwhelmed most fuel treatment effects ... This included almost all treatment methods including prescribed burning and thinning ... suppression efforts had little benefit from fuel modifications.” In addition to the failure of forest reduction projects to effectively limit large wildfires, from an forest ecosystem perspective large, high-severity fires are critical to forest health. Many plants and animals depend on the episodic input of snags and fallen logs that are created by large wildfires. They have the second highest biodiversity found in our forests. The reality is that we cannot halt these large fires, but must learn to live with them. Reducing the flammability of homes, and not building in high fire locations in the first place are the only proven measures that can save communities. ■ George Wuerthner is an ecologist and has published 38 books including “Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.” He lives in Bend. OTHER VIEWS The empty culture wars T he secret of culture war is that then encouraging his own partisans it is often a good and necessary to interpret the kneeling as a broad thing. People don’t like culture affront to their own patriotism and wars when they’re on the losing side, politics. So now we’re “arguing” (I and while they’re losing they often use the term loosely) about everything complain about how cultural concerns from the free-speech rights of pro are distractions from the “real” issues, athletes to whether the national anthem usually meaning something to do is right-wing political correctness with the deficit or education or where to LeBron James’ punditry on the Ross to peg the Medicare growth rate or miseducation of Trump voters ... and which terrorist haven the United States Douthat the specific issue that Kaepernick Comment should be bombing next. intended to raise, police misconduct, But in the sweep of American is buried seven layers of controversy history, it’s the battles over cultural norms deep. and so-called social issues — over race and You could say, it’s always thus with culture religion, intoxicants and sex, speech and wars and racial battles, but in fact it isn’t and censorship, immigration and assimilation — doesn’t need to be. Arguments about race were that for better or worse have often made us often toxic in the 1970s and 1980s, but there who we are. were core policy issues that could be argued Still, even a proud culture warrior should and ultimately compromised over — crime be able to concede that not all culture wars and welfare and affirmative action — and are created equal. A good culture war is one across the 1990s they were, to some extent, that, beneath all the posturing and demagogy and as they were overt racial tensions and noise, has clear policy implications, a eased considerably. In 2001, two-thirds of core legal or moral question, a place where Americans (and more blacks than whites) one side can win a necessary victory or where described race relations as somewhat good a new consensus can be hashed out. A bad or very good, and while the white view was culture war is one in which attitudinizing, usually slightly rosier thereafter, the two-thirds tribalism and worst-case fearmongering float pattern held for more than a decade — until around unmoored from any specific legal Ferguson, Missouri, and Black Lives Matter question, in which mutual misunderstanding and the other controversies of the late Obama reigns and a thousand grievances are stirred years, followed by the rise of Trump, sent up without a single issue being clarified or racial optimism into a tailspin. potentially resolved. For hope to resurface, we need specific Unfortunately for us all, Donald Trump issues and potential compromises to is a master, a virtuoso, of the second kind of re-emerge. In particular, we need a public culture war — and a master, too, of taking argument clearly tethered to the two big policy social and cultural debates that could be questions raised by police misconduct and the important and necessary and making them broader crime and incarceration debate. stupider and emptier and all about himself. First, can we have the greater He is not the only figure pushing American accountability for cops that activists arguments in that direction — cable news, reasonably demand, in which juries convict reality TV, campus protesters and late-night more trigger-happy officers and police political “comedy” all have a similar effect departments establish a less adversarial these days. But he is the president, which relationship to the communities they lends him a unique deranging influence, and police, without the surge of violence that’s he is unique as well in that unlike most culture accompanied the apparent retreat of the police warriors — who are usually initially idealists, in cities like Baltimore and Chicago? however corrupted they may ultimately Second, can we continue the move toward become — he has never cared about anything de-incarceration — supported, not that long higher or nobler than himself, and so he’s ago, by Republicans as well as Democrats — never happier than when the entire country without reversing the gains that have made seems to be having a culture war about, well, many of our cities safe? Donald Trump. These are hard questions that can be The NFL-national anthem controversy, the answered only gradually, through trial-and- latest Trump-stoked social conflagration, is a error and with various false starts. But they are quintessential bad culture war. It was trending questions that could have answers, that could that way already before Trump, because the point to a stable policy consensus around race act of protest that Colin Kaepernick chose to and criminal justice, in a way that our present call attention to police shootings of unarmed “Make America Great Again” versus “You’re black men — sitting and then kneeling for All White Supremacists” culture war does not. “The Star-Spangled Banner” — was clearer For those answers to matter, for them to in the calculated offense it gave than in the depolarize our country, we need a social and specific cause it sought to further, clearer in its cultural debate focused on the substance swipe at a Racist America than its prescription that Colin Kaepernick’s choice of protest for redress. (That Kaepernick sported Fidel unfortunately obscured, and Donald Trump’s Castro T-shirts and socks depicting cops as flagsploitation has deliberately buried. Not an pigs did not exactly help.) end to culture war, but a better culture war — But in his usual bullying and race-baiting in which victory and defeat can be defined, way, Trump has made it much, much and peace becomes a possibility. worse, by multiplying the reasons one ■ might reasonably kneel — for solidarity Ross Douthat joined The New York with teammates, as a protest against the Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. president’s behavior, as a gesture in favor of Previously, he was a senior editor at the free speech, as an act of racial pride — and Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. YOUR VIEWS Trump has contempt for ordinary people A wise man once said, “There are no great men, only ordinary men rising up to do great things.” The ordinary men, in my opinion, are the ones in uniform, not only in our military but in football uniforms across this country who have peacefully protested the ongoing inequality and injustice that their families and friends have continued to be subjected to, as if the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s had never been enacted. The veterans and civilians that have the education to realize that our flag represents freedom and nothing more. The hypocrisy of the phony patriots that have wrapped themselves in the flag, that spend Memorial Day half drunk with not a thought in their heads or a care in the world about the sacrifices made by veterans and then all of a sudden become incensed when someone protests peacefully and totally within their rights, brings me deep shame. While I will always stand for the anthem and place hand over heart, it will be along with a prayer for the still-suffering Americans so callously disregarded because of the color of their skin and not the content of their character. One last thought: Less than ten players in the entire league were kneeling during the anthem at the beginning of the season. After the latest episode of diarrhea of the mouth by our dim bulb of a leader, it ballooned to more than 200. When our bigot-in-chief speaks, extreme controversy and divisiveness always follows. David Gracia Hermiston LETTERS POLICY 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 website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
