Monkey man don’t do 'civil discourse'

Sisters Mayor Lon Kellstrom read a proclamation Thursday night reaffirming the city council’s commitment to civil discourse. The proclamation was in response to the Tucson shootings and the (tenuous) connection with the overheated rhetorical climate in America.

It’s always a good idea to remind ourselves that, as our president is fond of saying, “we can disagree without being disagreeable.” But how realistic is that? In a free society, with a lot of convenient megaphones that amplify our sometimes strident voices, people’s feelings are going to get hurt. And they’re going to get mad. And at a certain point, they’re going to get so mad they can’t think straight.

When our political ideologies are tangled up with our identity, civil discourse is really difficult, maybe impossible.

One of my favorite bloggers is a corrections officer/writer/martial artist/philosopher named Sgt. Rory Miller. One of his recent blog entries hits on a phenomenon that I believe explains the tenor of a lot of our national — and even local — political and social discourse.

...Two conversations today, talks where intelligent people lied and math (not fake philosophical math but simple "2x4 is less than 2x8, you realize that, right?" ) was dismissed, and historical documents didn't count. But the most important thing is realizing, whether in criminals or martial artists or debate, that there is an identifier. When the other side gets labeled. When the person says "You are a _________" or "You sound just like___________" Right there the tribal mind is engaged. You are no longer reasoning with a human but trying to reason with a monkey...
With patience and by pretending to not notice dominance games or accepting a label as 'other' I have sometimes given people the space and time to let the monkey brain die down and get back to tangible problems. But rarely, if ever, when the problem was tied directly to their identity.

We’re in a phase where, for many people, politics is tied directly to their identity. People choose sides, and lash their identity to their party, their movement, their tribe. They label those who disagree and perceive them as “other.”

This is by no means a new phenomenon in our history. In fact, I’d argue that it’s more common than periods of broad consensus and “civility.”

No proclamation, no matter how heartfelt, is going to change the climate. Unless... it causes us in that critical moment to pause, to question whether our identity is really under threat, to ask ourselves, “am I a monkey or a man?”

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Sisters should elect its mayor

This is no way to start a new year and a new city council.

The first act that brand-new city councilor David Asson will take Thursday night will be divisive. It’s not his fault; he’s the presumptive swing vote in a choice between Lon Kellstrom and Sharlene Weed for the mayor’s seat on the council. Asson has already indicated that he will not support Weed in for position, but any way he votes puts him crosswise with somebody right off the bat, despite best intentions to be a unifying force.

By charter, the city council selects the mayor after each election. The idea is that the mayor is merely “first among equals” rather than a separately elected chief. That’s fine for a small city with little politics. But that’s not what Sisters is anymore.

Like it or not, Sisters has politics — strongly held diverging positions on issues ranging from economic development to the manner in which the city should conduct its business. That means the old way of selecting the mayor is outmoded.

Council selection of the mayor sets the body up for infighting and gamesmanship which erodes the body’s ability to work together. Direct election eliminates one divisive element.

The citizens should decide who they want to be the face of the city and a four-year term will give the position built-in continuity. Direct election makes the will of the citizenry clear and gives the mayor a mandate. It also makes the mayor more accountable for the manner and style of his or her conduct of the city’s affairs.

It would take a charter amendment to change the method of the mayor’s election — something that many in the City of Bend are also advocating for the same reasons. It’s an idea whose time has come.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

‘A nation of wusses’

Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania was HOT.

Facing forecasts of heavy snow and wind, the NFL postponed the Vikings Eagles Sunday evening game to Tuesday night. Rendell called the decision a joke, saying that legendary Green Bay Packers coach and tough guy Vince Lombardi would be spinning in his grave. He also threw out a bit of cultural commentary:

“My biggest beef is that this is part of what’s happened in this country,” Rendell said in an interview on 97.5 radio in Philly. “I think we’ve become wussies. ... We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.” — Washington Post

Well, Ed, I was thinking along the same lines a few days ago.

I was reading “War On The Run,” a recent biography of Maj. Robert Rogers, who led what you might consider America’s first special operations force during the French & Indian War (1755-1763).

No wusses there. Just getting through life was damned hard and the odds of simply making it through childhood would make a Vegas oddsmaker blanch. Author John F. Ross describes a diphtheria epidemic that claimed 70 percent of the children in a New England community probably about the size of Sisters in a matter of days. Some parents lost every one of their children, one after another.

Poor nutrition and nearly nonexistent medical understanding meant that wounds and injuries healed slowly or not at all — and getting hurt or wounded was nearly inevitable in the rough life of the New England frontier, especially in wartime.

The toughest, most athletic men, like Rogers himself, were subject to ailments from arthritis to malaria to scurvy. It’s no wonder that many ended up, again like Rogers, broken down alcoholics. Rum and brandy were about all that you could count on to blunt the pain and discomfort of living.

That’s to say nothing of getting captured by pissed off Abenaki who might adopt you if they felt like it — or chew your fingers off, drop a necklace of red-hot tomahawk heads on your shoulders, scalp you and pour hot coals over your bare skull. Or, if they were in hurry, they might just tie you to a tree and chop you to bits.

Closing the book and going online I find stories that tell me “New study finds baby boomers are in a funk,” reporting “less overall life satisfaction during their adulthood than have previous generations.” Hmmmm....

And — sign of the times — a report that psychology guidelines are dropping narcissistic personality disorder from diagnoses. Maybe because narcissism is the “new normal.”

You were saying, Ed?

OK, OK, I understand that it’s easy to wear out the “our ancestors had it so much harder” riff: “Why, in my day, we walked 20 miles to school in the snow. Uphill in both directions. Ate tree bark and thanked god for every bite.”

“Yes, Aunt Susie. We know.”

Sisters songwriter Dennis McGregor spoofs all that business wonderfully in his song “Pioneer Dog” (“A pioneer dog had a haaaard life to live...”)

I know too much about the good ol’ days to get too romantic about ’em. I’m not about to give up antibiotics, modern dentistry or my nice new Columbia snowboots.

But, you know, a little perspective really helps. It’s not fashionable these days to have heroes from history, but I do. And I often have taken courage and inspiration from their travails and their fortitude. Whether it’s simply keeping on when I want to quit — in the woods, the gym, wherever — or facing up to the inevitable blows that life hands to us all, I know I can stay the course, because I know that others have faced up to much tougher plights.

No, I don’t wish I lived in the harsh world of our forefathers. But even less do I want to live in a nation of wusses.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

This is America, right?

Gutenberg College, a very small, private, Christian academy, is looking seriously at moving to Sisters.

You’d think this would be regarded as good news by folks in Sisters. Economic Development Manager Mac Hay has been working with the college for months to try to make this happen; it would be an early success for Sisters’ economic development efforts. And it seems that most people do see it that way.

However, some folks don’t like the idea. When Gutenberg first looked into Sisters in 2007, there was a raft of letters to the editor slamming a figurative door in their face because the writers found the college’s doctrine offensive. The same kinds of comments are circulating again.
The objections boil down to “we don’t want your kind here.” Comment on our Facebook page: “wow, I thought we already fought this battle....here we go again :(.”

What battle? Why should there be any hostility? Could it be, perhaps... bigotry?

This is America, folks. “We don’t like your kind” doesn’t fly here. Sometimes it takes us decades or even centuries to recognize that freedom for any means freedom for all, but gradually, often painfully, we do.

People of a certain cultural/political persuasion are adamant about the establishment clause of the first amendment to the Constitution, yet seem to forget that its purpose was not so much to keep religion out of government, but to protect religious sects from being suppressed or dominated by a state-sanctioned denomination as they were in the Mother Country.

Like it or not, the foundation of this country rests largely on the desire of the first settlers to freely exercise their faith — and we must continue to uphold the principles of free exercise in the Constitution’s third century. That goes for mosques in Manhattan or Christian schools in Sisters.

Back in ’07, people were saying that the school would “take over the town.” That’s as absurd and paranoid as believing the Muslims are going to take over America. Have we really lost our faith in ourselves that completely?

Personally, I am as unchurched and non-religious as you could be — and will resolutely defend my right to be so. I carry no brief for Islam, but I want Muslims to be accorded the same religious freedoms our Christian forefathers insisted upon for themselves. And if a Christian school wants to teach a biblically-centered curriculum in Sisters, I have no problem with that, either.

There is something comical — or maybe pathetic — about touting “diversity” and “tolerance” on one hand and limiting to whom they apply on the other.

There’s too much fear and loathing these days. Let’s not add to it.

Jim Cornelius, Editor