War tax

As President Obama deliberates over his Afghanistan strategy (thought he had one during the campaign — guess that was just rhetoric), some Democrats are proposing the imposition of a “war tax” to cover the costs of escalating what is sure to be a long-term commitment with uncertain goals and exit strategy.

Of course, this is political posturing, but I’d prefer to take it seriously.

There should have been a war tax from the beginning. Putting billions of dollars of war spending on our credit card is bankrupt in every sense of the term.

Sen. Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services Committee wants a tax on the wealthy to cover the costs of escalation. Bah. Should be across the board. All of us should bear the burden. Or decide we don’t want to.

That, of course, is why we don’t do the war tax thing. Wars that start showing up in a clear and unmistakable way on our tab run the risk of getting really unpopular really fast.

If the mission is worth pursuing, it’s worth shared, national sacrifice. Why should military families be the only ones feeling a direct impact? If the whole nation is not on board with the mission, maybe we should reconsider the mission.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Ashes to ashes? Future anxiety in America

It’s all over in 2012. So says the ancient Mayan prophecy and last weekend’s box office champion movie. Pretty soon we’ll be treated to the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s horrific Pulitzer Prize-winning post-apocalyptic novel “The Road.”

This is the kind of story we tell ourselves when we’re looking at the light at the end of the tunnel, convinced it’s an inbound train. Anxiety about the future seems to have the American consciousness in its grip — when we can tear ourselves away from John and Kate and Carrie Prejean’s sex tape(s) that is.

Only about a third of Americans think the country is on the right track. For a future-oriented, optimistic culture like ours, that equates to a bout of depression. People are surly and angry and there seems to be little faith that we can get anything done.

In his latest column (The Nugget, November 18, page 2), David Brooks addresses this anxiety as it relates to the growing power of China (aka, our banker):

“....moral materialism fomented a certain sort of manic energy. Americans became famous for their energy and workaholism: for moving around, switching jobs, marrying and divorcing, creating new products and going off on righteous crusades.

“This eschatological faith in the future has motivated generations of Americans, just as religious faith motivates a missionary. Pioneers and immigrants endured hardship in the present because of their confidence in future plenty. Entrepreneurs start up companies with an exaggerated sense of their chances of success. The faith is the molten core of the country’s dynamism.”

Right now, that faith is deeply shaken — and China seems to have taken it over.

Brooks again: “The anxiety in America is caused by the vague sense that they have what we’re supposed to have. It’s not the per capita income, which the Chinese may never have at our level. It’s the sense of living with baubles just out of reach. It’s the faith in the future, which is actually more important.”

I’ve personally never had that manic faith. I grew up knowing that things can go very wrong and that the outlook wasn’t going to improve. A lifelong immersion in history-geekdom reinforced an innate pessimism.

But it’s an optimistic kind of pessimism. Or maybe a pessimistic form of optimism. Acceptance.

In the words of Steve Earle:

Now, nobody lives forever
Nothin' stands the test of time
Oh, you heard 'em say "never say never"
But it's always best to keep it in mind
That every tower ever built tumbles
No matter how strong, no matter how tall
Someday even great walls will crumble
And every idol ever raised falls
And someday even man's best laid plans
Will lie twisted and covered in rust
When we've done all that we can but it slipped through our hands
And it's ashes to ashes and dust to dust

Yep. That’s pretty much how I see things. May seem weird, but it’s a cheerful, or at least comfortable, thought. We’re all part of gigantic long-term processes and the way things are is the way they must be.

I certainly don’t believe in being passive. Work and struggle are worthy — for their own sake. It doesn’t matter that it all turns to rust and ash in the end. The point is to fight the good fight. I get up and do my best every day. It doesn’t matter what the future may hold.

That outlook relieves a lot of anxiety. I do think that, in the grand sweep of things, America is in relative decline. It’ll be a long one, and hopefully not an abrupt, catastrophic crash. Every tower ever built tumbles/No matter how strong, no matter how tall.

A new world is rising right before our eyes. We’re in an age of profound change. There are too many contingencies to hazard predictions (unless that’s your racket) but it’s a safe bet that another century will see a profound realignment of power structures, ecology and life-ways.

“History is never coming back,” says my fifth-grader. She’s right. Cling to nothing temporary, say the stoics. And if it’s material, it’s all temporary.

Don’t sweat it. See you in 2012. Maybe.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Wrangling over the McKenzie Meadows annexation

The proposed annexation of the 30-acre McKenzie Meadows property for the site of a senior living community has become a hot issue in Sisters.

The public rhetoric has, so far, been pretty civil (though I’ve heard some complain otherwise). The private comments I’ve heard are another story. People are fired up about this.

That’s a little weird to me. Seems like an issue that could be addressed pretty dispassionately. I can easily lawyer both sides.

Pro: Sisters needs to accommodate an aging population. This is the piece of land that had the right price to make a project pencil. It was already approved for annexation by voters. It’s not sprawl; it’s bordered by schools and a shopping center.

If the project doesn’t fly, it’s just a bare piece of ground paying taxes into the city.

It’ll provide vital construction jobs and ongoing service jobs.

Con:

The jobs are speculative; we don’t know if this project is viable.

Sisters needs to focus on keeping a vital downtown core. We’ve already pushed development and economic activity out on the margins (Outlaw Station at one end, Five Pine at the other).

We already have too much inactive developable space and too much inventory; we shouldn’t add too it now.

Neither side is all right or all wrong here. There are competing visions, sure, and differing views on viability, but I don’t think any honest assessment couldn’t concede points to the other side.
But that’s not how we do things anymore. And that’s what interests me.

Sisters, like the rest of the nation, has fallen into a very divisive, hardball kind of politics. In the city council election last November PACs contributed significant amounts of money to campaigns, for the first time in Sisters’ history.

The school local option campaign drew in a lot of cultural baggage from well outside the school district — attitudes toward public education in general and toward taxes and government in general — that shaped peoples’ attitude toward a strictly local measure.

This annexation issue has brought out some pretty strong language regarding various peoples’ integrity, character and motives. Again, that’s all been private and/or anonymous so far, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see it go public during and after the city council’s decision on Thursday night.

What it shows me is that Sisters is not much different than anywhere else in the USA right now. People are quick to take sides, quick to think the worst of each other and feel increasingly threatened by people who think differently than they do.

I guess this is nothing new. Certainly the fight over the sewer system got pretty nasty.

But there seems to be something meaner in the air these days, an ill wind that pushes into the cracks between people and drives them farther and farther apart until disagreements are irreconcilable differences.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The long memory of veterans

Jeff Spry did a nice piece in this week’s Nugget profiling Harold Mulligan, a former Sisters resident who is still active in Sisters veterans groups. Mulligan is a Pearl Harbor survivor and he saw a lot more action in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

Jeff’s story closes with a quote that I found very striking:

“Mostly at night when sun goes down is when it bothers you most. The older you get, the worse it gets. There's a lot of nights lying awake.”

That sounds a lot like my uncle, now 91 and living in Arizona. He was an infantry captain in Italy during the war. I know little of his service because when I was young and we lived in Southern California, he never talked about the war.

I do know that he saw a lot of heavy combat in very rough terrain and that it was a bad experience for him.

My dad visits him a lot and now, he says, after decades of almost complete silence on the subject, the war is almost all my uncle talks about.

What particularly preys on his mind is the young 18-year-old replacements sent into the lines at night. Many times, the Germans would mortar the Americans’ position overnight and these kids would be wounded or killed before they ever fired a shot. Before anybody even knew their name.
My uncle keeps coming back to that. He’s lived a long life. Those kids had theirs cut short. That kind of thing gets to you.

Those memories reaching their long fingers across decades of time are not uncommon, I’m told. “The older you get the worse it gets” is common. It’s not unusual for decades of silence to be broken by an intense focus on wartime experiences.

“Stereotypically normal,” says a friend who works with veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.

That’s why groups like those that have recently come into being in Sisters where veterans assist one another are so important. Veterans who have a hard time dealing with their memories need to be around people who have shared similar experiences, who know how it feels.

And my friend in the field will tell you, there’s a whole new generation of men and women who are going to struggle with “a lot of nights lying awake.”

Hopefully, we are better now at helping folks get through those long nights than we used to be.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The electronic leash

I hate my cell phone.

I don’t like the feeling that I can be tracked down at any time, anywhere. Sometimes I feel like the damn thing is like one of those electronic surveillance devices they slap around your ankle when you’re under house arrest.

But I don’t know how I got along without one. It makes my job so much easier. Journalism is about 80 percent phone calls, and I don’t have to be chained to a desk to make them. My cell phone makes me more productive.

Come January, I’ll have to get a hands-free device to use it in the truck. Oregon, like other states is trying to crack down on cell phone distractions while driving. This may be a cosmetic effort. There’s evidence that it’s the talking itself that is the big distraction, not holding the phone (though dropping your cell phone in the car prompts an almost instinctive move to grab it instead of paying attention to the road. That’s a crash waiting to happen).

Somehow I doubt that the new Oregon law will be stringently enforced, which makes it kind of moot. The urge to use the phone is too strong unless the consequences are huge.

Maybe they should be, especially for texting while driving. In Britain, texting while driving is a serious crime and if you hurt somebody, you will go to prison. It’s treated more or less like drunk driving.

Cell phones are here to stay until they are supplanted by some more sophisticated technology. That means we’ll have to put up with people yakking on their phone in the grocery line and other annoyances.

Texting habits will cnt 2 dstry wrtn eng lng LOL.

But maybe it’s a good idea to make the roads communications free zones. At least ban texting and  enforce the ban with strict penalties. Nobody can argue that texting while driving isn’t a big public safety concern (can they?).

As for cell phone use, I try to be good about that, but I’m probably bad as everybody else. After all, I have a GOOD REASON to be using the phone in the car.

I’ll do the hands free thing in January, though I’d rather take that damn thing (and yours, too) and chuck it out the truck window at 80 mph.

Wait. That’s illegal.

Jim Cornelius, Editor