A4
East Oregonian
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OTHER VIEWS
How we destroy lives today
W
ithin living memory, political
polarization had at least some-
thing to do with issues, but in
the age of social media, it’s almost entirely
about social type. It’s about finding and
spreading the viral soap operas that are
supposed to reveal the dark hearts of those
who are in the opposite social type from
your own.
It’s about finding images that confirm
your negative stereo-
types about people you
don’t know. It’s about
reducing a complex
human life into one
viral moment and
then banishing him to
oblivion.
You don’t have to
D aviD
read social theory
B rooks
on this phenom-
COMMENT
enon; just look at the
fracas surrounding the
Covington Catholic High School boys.
For those of you vacationing on Mars
this past weekend, a video went viral
showing a group of boys, many of them in
MAGA hats, surrounding an older Native
American man who was banging a drum.
The man, Nathan Phillips, told two
different versions of what happened.
He told The Washington Post that he
was singing a traditional song when the
teenagers swarmed around him, some
chanting, “Build that wall, build that
wall.” He decided the right thing to do was
get away. “I’ve got to find myself an exit
out of this situation.”
He told The Detroit Free Press that
the incident started when the boys started
attacking four African-Americans. So
he decided to intervene. “There was that
moment when I realized I’ve put myself
between beast and prey. These young men
were beastly and these old black individ-
uals was their prey.”
Many news organizations ran one
Survival Media Agency via AP
A teenager wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, center left, stands in front of Nathan
Phillips, an Omaha elder singing and playing a drum in Washington during a rally on Friday.
of these accounts. Before you judge the
reporters too harshly, it’s important to
remember that these days the social media
tail wags the mainstream media dog. If
you want your story to be well placed and
if you want to be professionally rewarded,
you have to generate page views — you
have to incite social media. The way to do
that is to reinforce the prejudices of your
readers.
In this one episode, you had a gentle,
64-year-old Native American man being
swarmed by white (boo!), male (boo!),
preppy (double boo!) Trump supporters
(infinite boo!). If you are trying to rub the
pleasure centers of a liberal audience, this
is truly a story too good to check.
Saturday was a day of liberal vindica-
tion. See! This is what those people do!
This is who they really are. Reza Aslan,
the religious scholar, tweeted a photo of
the main Covington boy and asked, “Have
you ever seen a more punchable face than
this kid’s?” The filmmaker Michael Green
showed the same image and tweeted: “A
face like that never changes. This image
will define his life. No one need ever
forgive him.”
The institutions in charge of serving
the boys did what institutions always
do in the face of a social media mob.
They cratered. The school and archdio-
cese apologized. The mayor of Covington
denounced them.
On Sunday, several longer videos
emerged showing that most of what Phil-
lips had told the media was inaccu-
rate. The incident actually started when
members of the hate cult — the Black
Hebrew Israelites — started hurling racist
and homophobic slurs at the boys.
The Covington boys eventually asked
their chaperone if they could do their
school cheers. As they were doing that,
Phillips walked into the middle of their
circle and banged his drum in the face of
one of the boys. Everybody was suddenly
confused. Students shouted, “What is
going on?” Then there was confusion and
discomfort, smirking and verbal jousting.
Everybody involved in the incident
was operating in an emotional and moral
context that has been set by the vicious-
ness of the Black Hebrew Israelites. Of the
major players, the boys’ behavior is prob-
ably the least egregious.
So Sunday was a day of conserva-
tive vindication. See? This is what those
liberals do! They rush to judgment, dehu-
manize and seek to expunge us from
national life. The main boy wrote a public
letter that was consistent with the visual
evidence and that was actually quite
humane.
In this case the facts happened to
support the right-wing tribe. But that’s
not the point. The crucial thing is that the
nation’s culture is now enmeshed in a new
technology that we don’t yet know how to
control.
In this technology, stereotype is more
salient than persons. In this technology,
a single moment is more important than
a life story. In this technology, a main
activity is proving to the world that your
type is morally superior to the other type.
The Covington case was such a blatant
rush to judgment — it was powered by
such crude prejudice and social stereo-
typing — I’m hoping it will be an
important pivot point. I’m hoping that at
least a few people start thinking about
norms of how decent people should
behave on these platforms.
It’s hard to believe that people are
going to continue forever on platforms
where they are so cruel to one another. It’s
hard to believe that people are going to
be content, year after year, to distort their
own personalities in service to a platform,
making themselves humorless, semi-blind,
joyless and grim.
———
David Brooks is a columnist for the
New York Times.
OTHER VIEWS
YOUR VIEWS
How Democrats came to love ‘co-equal’
T
he divided government of 2019 is a
mirror image of the divided govern-
ment of 2011. Back then, Democrats
controlled the White House and Senate,
while Republicans had recently taken
control of the House with a big victory in
the 2010 midterms. Today, Republicans
control the White House and Senate, while
Democrats have recently taken control
of the House with a
big victory in the 2018
midterms.
It’s the same situ-
ation, essentially. But
today there is a vastly
different public conver-
sation about the balance
of power in govern-
B ryon
ment. These days, we
y ork
are often reminded that
COMMENT
Congress is a co-equal
branch of government,
and therefore Speaker Nancy Pelosi stands
on an even level with President Trump.
Back in 2011, when the two players were
Speaker John Boehner and President
Barack Obama, there wasn’t as much of
that kind of talk.
A comparison, from the Nexis data-
base of newspapers, magazines, websites
and television transcripts: From Election
Day 2010 until Jan. 20, 2011, there were
18 mentions of “Boehner” and “co-equal.”
From Election Day 2018 until Jan. 20,
2019, there were 683 mentions of “Pelosi”
and “co-equal.”
Democrats have been saying it every
day, starting with Pelosi the morning after
the election. Congress’ role is “not to be a
rubber stamp, but a co-equal branch,” she
said, adding that she and her colleagues
had a “responsibility for oversight as an
independent, co-equal branch.”
Pelosi said much the same many more
times by Jan. 3, when she officially won
the speaker’s gavel. In her first speech on
the House floor, she said, “The legisla-
tive branch is Article I: the first branch of
government, co-equal to the president and
judiciary.”
Virtually every other House Democrat
said it, too.
There was even talk to the effect that
Pelosi is now equal to the president. The
chief advocate: Pelosi herself. “Asked if
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of
the East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
she considers herself Mr. Trump’s equal,
she replied, ‘The Constitution does,’” The
New York Times reported in an article
about the speaker.
A Jan. 17 discussion on CNN focused
on the speaker’s battle with the president
over the government shutdown and State
of the Union address. Republican Rep.
Michael Turner said of Pelosi, “She needs
to come to some recognition that she’s
not equal to the president of the United
States.”
Susan Hennessey, a Brookings Insti-
tution scholar, CNN analyst, and editor
of the blog Lawfare, blanched. “Pretty
wild to hear a member of Congress force-
fully argue that congressional leaders are
constitutionally inferior to the president,”
Hennessey tweeted. “James Madison
weeps.”
But the speaker of the House is not, in
fact, equal to the president of the United
States. Congress, not the House, is a
co-equal branch of government. Actually,
more than equal — it is, as Pelosi noted,
the first branch of government. But to
exert its will, Congress must be united. To
overrule the president — and, of course,
Congress can even remove the president
— Congress must be united.
Pelosi controls just half of Congress.
And she only controls the House when she
gets 218 members to agree with her. To
overrule a presidential veto, she needs 287
members to agree with her. And then the
Senate, controlled by Republicans under
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has to
go along.
On the other end of Pennsylvania
Avenue, the executive branch is the only
branch of government headed by a single
person. That gives that one person, in this
case President Trump, the power of the
executive branch. No single person in the
other two branches has that power.
The bottom line is the House is
one-half of a co-equal branch of govern-
ment. The speaker of the House is enor-
mously powerful in the House. If she can
persuade majorities, and sometimes super-
majorities, of House members, and then
majorities, and sometimes supermajori-
ties, of the Senate to go along with her, she
can block the president’s agenda and exert
enormous power in the government. But
by herself — not so much.
The system simply was not designed
for a head-to-head equal competition —
the president versus the speaker. It doesn’t
work that way. It’s entirely understandable
that Democrats and their allies in the press
would want to see Pelosi as equal to the
president. But that doesn’t make it true.
———
Byron York is chief political corre-
spondent for The Washington Examiner.
Ellis Project road closures
a ‘blank check’
I would like to provide you with my
concerns regarding the Ellis [Integrated
Vegetation] Project [in the Umatilla
National Forest].
My name is Ladd Dick and I was born
and raised in Heppner (class of 1962). I am
a business owner (1967-1972) and a part
owner of a family cabin on Lake Penland,
where I spend as much of my time as
possible.
The information I received indicates
that 30 to 100 miles of roads would be
closed. This should be an exact number
and the roads to be closed listed and shown
on a map. I will never be comfortable with
allowing an unknown number and miles of
roads to be closed. Who makes this deci-
sion and why hasn’t it already been made?
This is like a blank check with no limit on
the amount.
This is national forest, not a national
park. It is publicly owned and road closures
limit my access to areas that I have
enjoyed since I was a child (born in 1944).
I protested new logging roads (1960s and
1970s) that were being built within yards of
existing roads, but now the pendulum has
moved way too far in the other direction.
I am an avid hunter and fisherman but
am now limited to a short distance from
my vehicle. I am not handicapped but this
could be seen as a violation of Americans
With Disabilities rights. Is this an attempt
to make certain areas available only to
private hunting groups on our public land?
That is the result of road closures in other
areas of the national forest where I have
hunted in the past. These road closures
were the result of washouts that were never
repaired due to a lack of funds (a conve-
nient way to achieve road closures), not a
planned road closure.
When I have requested projects for the
Forest Service to consider, the response
has always been no funds are available.
How do funds for a project that will limit
my access to areas I love become avail-
able? Why are funds available to close
roads but are not available repair damaged
roads? Road closures will only benefit
special interest groups.
Thank you for this opportunity to
express my concerns with the Ellis Project.
Ladd E. Dick
Oak Harbor, Wash.
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for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold
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