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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
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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.