Editor:
I am a Linn County resident, living halfway between Sweet Home and Lebanon
I am a senior citizen, an independent voter and I enjoy riding bicycles with a bike club.
When you ride a bike for 30 to 40 miles there is plenty of time to think.
I have a few questions for, and concerns about, my Linn County neighbors.
We have plenty of room on our rural roads. There are many, usually men but not always, that make a point to accelerate and drive as dangerously close as they can as they drive past. Why do you blow smoke in our faces with your diesel trucks? Why do you do this? Why are you angry?
Do you think we are liberals from Portland coming to destroy your way of life? Most of us riding live right around the corner from you.
I don’t get the point, but it makes me wonder about where we are as a community, and as a nation.
What happened at the White House on Jan. 6 was hideous. There are some in our area that believe the election was stolen. There are those, like me, who believe that is nonsense. What we believe to be true is based on what we read and watch and who we listen to.
I have liberal friends who assure me they know the facts and I have Trumper friends who assure me of the same. Both sides speak in self-righteous and all-knowing platitudes.
Me? I am so left I am right… or is it I am so right I am left? Something like that.
Political thinking is not necessarily linear…I think it’s shaped more like a pretzel. We should all (emphasis) be able to come together at that point in the center which binds the pretzel together. I think of that place as personal responsibility. Neither political side has any preferential control over that.
Personal responsibility is our right and our obligation, and it belongs to us all.
It means listening more and talking less. Acting more and complaining less.
You know, any 2-year-old can kick down and destroy what an adult might build with sand or blocks.
It is so easy to rail against our neighbors, our government, our representatives. How many of us take on the responsibility to volunteer – to be active in our church, to write our concerns to our representatives, to assist our neighbors?
We sit on our phones complaining. We forward hateful and incendiary articles we find on social sites that we do not even bother to read, let alone confirm.
Look around our community.
“Make America Great Again” signs are everywhere. Yet on my bike rides I see trash and garbage all along the roadside. We cannot even make sure our trash is secure in our trucks – or we just dump it on the side of the road so someone else can clean it up. I see yards full of broken cars, and toys and junk. Dogs chained, horses alone and in filthy paddocks.
Rural Linn County is such a beautiful place. We can do better than this. We have the resources and spaces to be a model for the state and the country. Can’t we be kind to each other, rather than glaring at each other because of perceived differences. Can we stop using “us versus them?”
Really? I am tired of people on the right saddling me with all the transgressions of the radical left, and equally exhausted of my allegiances to political correctness being questioned by liberal acquaintances.
Am I the only moderate left around here?
Look. I live here too. I voted too. I just happened to vote for Biden. I did not like Trump. But once elected, I still respected the office and those who voted for him.
I like and trust my government. I want America to be great again too, OK? But I know it starts first and foremost with me. It involves being kind to my neighbors, respecting the laws, and doing what I can to make Linn County a better place to live.
It is so simple. First start in your own back yard with repairing America. That is complicated enough. It is a cop-out to think all of our problems rest on the shoulders of a president, some senators and representatives. Apply just basic consideration and kindness.
There is no need to blow diesel smoke in my face while I am out enjoying our rural roads. We are not enemies. We are Americans. We are neighbors. We can do better. I just have to believe it’s true.
Sandra Law
East Linn County