This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

A couple examples of selfishness have come to mind in the last couple days.

First, there is this obvious one.  Persons who decline to get the Covid 19 virus not only hurt themselves, but they hurt everyone else.  Of course, it’s these same selfish persons who refuse to accommodate government advice to wear masks.

The problem is that we don’t know who has been vaccinated and who has not.  With masks – at least not wearing one – you know that someone is being selfish.

Look only so are as the extremity Salem Health faces these days as non-vaccinated persons take beds which should be available for others.

Second, there is this example of selfishness, which came to my mind as we spent a few days at Black Butte Ranch in Central Oregon, which meant we traveled East over the Santiam Pass devastated by last year’s fires and threatened by more fires this year.

My wife read this from a local newspaper where we were:

Persons who refuse orders from emergency personnel to evacuate as fires draw closer endanger not only themselves, but also the firefighters.

We all can be selfish from time to time, but, for me, there is no excuse for the two examples cited above.  The more I think about those who choose to be unvaccinated the more angry I get.  Fires?  Another story, but not as close to home, at least not yet this year as it was last year.

I suppose someone could say that “it’s my right to act and behave as I choose.”  Okay, act that way and behave that way as long as you don’t adversely affect others by your so-called independent action.

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And this postscript to the blog I wrote under the title, “You Can’t Fix Stupid:”  This comes from a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal.

“I would like to add one more element to Lance Morrow’s “Unified Field Theory of Stupidity”: the demise of debate.  I used to engage, via email, in polite yet spirited debates with my leftist friends.  Those debates no longer happen. Somehow name-calling replaced logical argument, and if you wanted your long-term friendships to survive, it was better to avoid politics altogether. You realized that because you lost a good friend during the George W. Bush years and another during the Obama administration and, God knows, a couple more with Donald Trump.

“If a nation cannot bear the conflict and recriminations generated by a spirited debate of the ideology and proposals of its opposing parties, then insular stupidity is inevitable.”

I agree with the letter writer.  Unfortunately, we have lost the ability to engage in vigorous, though friendly, debates about politics.