Chicago Tribune|Section 1|Monday, February 24, 2020 19
Russia aims to
sow chaos in US
Allegations from intelligence officials
that Russians are interfering in U.S. elec-
tions again are not surprising
Russia’s goal isn’t to promote President
Donald Trump’s reelection bid so much as
to undermine American democracy by
creating internal political conflicts, popu-
lace strife and electoral confusion. This is a
relatively new form of international war-
fare necessitating creation of mechanisms
to counter such insidious initiatives.
Unfortunately, Trump believes Russian
President Vladimir Putin has a commit-
ment to him rather than to establishing
international hegemony concomitant with
destroying American democracy. Putin is
using Trump in a larger manipulative game
to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its
global allies.
— Ballard J. Powell, Country Club HillsShooting drills help
future shooters
Regarding the letter “Shooting drills help
prepare kids” (Feb. 18): I taught for over 40
years, and I went through many active
shooter drills, but my experience was vastly
different from that of letter writer Douglas
Peterson’s wife. The letter discounts the
stress that the drills create and argues that
the shooting drills make kids feel empow-
ered. While some of my students were
traumatized by the drills, most found them
to be a waste of time.
Consequently, the issue of unnecessary
stress was never much of a concern to me.
However, while I, too, believe that those
drills do prepare students, my question is:
Which students do they prepare and for
what?
When we would have shooter drills after
the Columbine High School massacre hap-
pened, I would be terrified that a depressed,
suicidal boy might be sitting next to me
daydreaming about getting an even higher
kill rate than the Columbine shooters.
As far as I could tell, if we had deeply
troubled boys, our shooter drills simply
prepared them to be better at killing. It told
them that if a door is unlocked, don’t bother
with it. Go to the rooms with things pushed
up against the doors.
These drills are not like fire drills. A fire is
not sentient being and is not out to do harm;
therefore, it does not adapt itself to kill
more, but deeply disturbed individuals do.
There must be a better way to prepare
schools from acts of violence than active
shooter drills.
— David Fript, ChicagoPush to rename
park is misguided
I am very sympathetic to the students
from Village Leadership Academy who
want to change the name of a park in their
community from Stephen A. Douglas to
Frederick Douglass. I think, however, that it
is a mistake to go down the road of renam-
ing parks and streets because we now rec-
ognize that historical figures made wrong
decisions, which prior generations did not
see when they honored these people.
There are two major parks that border
where I live on the South Side. George
Washington and Andrew Jackson both
owned slaves. In fact, at least 12 presidents
— including Jefferson, Madison, Adams
and Monroe — had slaves, and we have
many streets and parks named after them.
Onetime U.S. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas
and abolitionist Frederick Douglass both
deserve to be commemorated by Chicago,
and I hope that the Park District and the
Village Leadership Academy students can
agree on an approach to accomplish that.
— Richard Badger, ChicagoUsing technology
for CTA safety
Regarding “With CTA crime in spot-
light, tips for ‘L’ riders to stay safe”: In an
era where we all carry GPS devices in our
pockets, it is ridiculous that the best advice
to witnesses of a crime on the CTA is to
scurry to the next car in order to hit the
operator button and call 911. Why is there
no way to silently request help from my
phone? Similarly, the Tribune article says
that the bus driver union wants strobe
lights on the top of buses to alert police in
emergencies. Why not a silent message to
the police that includes the bus’s location
from GPS?
— Joshua Thompson, ChicagoFor online exclusive letters go to http://www.
chicagotribune.com/letters. Send letters
by email to [email protected]
or to Voice of the People, Chicago Tribune,
160 N. Stetson Ave., Third Floor, Chicago,
IL 60601. Include your name, address
and phone number.VOICE OF THE PEOPLERussian President Vladimir Putin listens
during a meeting in Moscow on Feb. 17.ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/APPERSPECTIVE
Most of us have probably seen the viral
video of the airline passenger repeatedly
punching the back of the reclined seat in
front of him. Much like the photo of the
striped dress from five years ago, which
appeared blue and black to some and
white and gold to others, the airplane
video has divided viewers, and the flying
world.
It’s easy to jump into this debate and
take a side. If you feel the need to recline
to achieve a more comfortable position,
you’ll likely favor the female passenger.
If, like me, you’re over 6 feet tall, you’ll
likely side with the male passenger.
The resulting raucous debate does
nothing more than give cover to the true
culprits: the airlines and the federal gov-
ernments that regulate them.
Reclinegate was not even a thing 40 or
50 years ago. Seat space was fairly gener-
ous back then and passengers could
recline without torturing their fellow
travelers. But thanks to deregulation and
corporate greed, the space between air-
line rows has continually shrunk to the
point where the only passengers who
don’t complain are those with short legs.
Pitch is the measurement of the dis-
tance between the front edge of your seat
and the back of the seat in front of you.
Years ago, the pitch was a generous and
comfortable 35 inches. Now you’re lucky
if you get 31 inches, and some flights have
reduced that space to a knee-crushing 28
or 29 inches.
Rather than rant and rave at fellow
passengers, it’s time we took up arms
(and legs) and insisted on sane seat size
regulations. Canada recently imple-
mented a passenger bill of rights, but the
only action taken was to make airlines
compensate passengers for excessive
delays.
If federal governments truly cared
about the health and safety of passengers,
they would strictly regulate seat size.
Although lengthy delays are annoying,
inadequate seat size can actually be
deadly.
We’re now aware of the risk of devel-
oping deep vein thrombosis on lengthy
flights, particularly when a passenger
remains seated and immobile for hours.
That risk increases significantly if you are
packaged in your seat like a sardine.
The federal governments in both Can-
ada and the United States should step up
and protect passengers’ health, safety
and even just their basic comfort. Legis-lators and bureaucrats have no problem
protecting us with seat belts, speed limits
and safe medications. Why not airplane
seat size?
“Recliners” and “punchers” should
take a break from their seat shoving and
start lobbying our legislators and bureau-
crats to get out of their comfy chairs and
regulate the flying torture seats that are
endangering our health.
In the U.S., legislation for the Airline
Passengers’ Bill of Rights proposes,
among other things, giving the FAA the
power to regulate seat size. The bill has
been referred to committee in the U.S.
Senate. But given the current political
atmosphere, it is far from being passed by
the Senate, much less the House, and
there is no guarantee the FAA would
even use the newly conferred power.
Airline passengers in both the U.S. and
Canada should redirect their air rage to
those in government and insist that the
cattle car mentality of the airlines be
changed. Sure, we may have to pay a bit
more for our flights but at least we’ll
make it to our destination alive and in
one piece.David Martin is a writer based in Ottawa,
Ontario.Legroom for airline passenger has been steadily shrinking for years.
NUCCIO DINUZZO/CHICAGO TRIBUNE 2014Turn that legroom rage into a
demand for airline seat regulations
By David Martin
Several years ago, in an overheated
room in Beijing, I was forced to endure a
stern lecture from a Chinese foreign min-
istry official. My sin: As the editor at The
Wall Street Journal responsible for the
paper’s overseas opinion sections, I had
apparently insulted the entire Chinese
people by publishing the work of a “well-
known terrorist” — courageous Uighur
human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer.
I had to clench my jaw to suppress the
rejoinder that China’s best-known tyrant,
Mao Zedong, has his portrait overlooking
the killing field known as Tiananmen
Square.
I thought of that episode last week on
hearing news that the Chinese govern-
ment decided to expel three Wall Street
Journal reporters based in China — two
Americans and an Australian — in retalia-
tion for the headline of an opinion column
by Walter Russell Mead, “China Is the
Real Sick Man of Asia.” In a style reminis-
cent of my own experience, the Foreign
Ministry issued a statement claiming,
“The Chinese people do not welcome
media that publish racist statements and
smear China with malicious attacks.”
Any reader of Mead’s column, headline
and text alike, will note that there isn’t an
iota of racism in it, though it makes a
devastating case about the ways in which
the coronavirus epidemic has exposed the
broader fragility of the Chinese system.
And those familiar with The Wall Street
Journal will know that the paper, like The
New York Times, enforces a strict separa-
tion between its news and opinion sec-
tions — meaning the reporters facing
expulsion had absolutely nothing to do
with the writing and publication of
Mead’s column.
But factual accuracy is irrelevant in a
political scapegoating exercise, which is
what this strike on the Journal is all about.
And this does more to underscore Mead’s
broader point about China’s inherent
weaknesses than it does to contradict it.
What are those weaknesses? Demogra-
phers point to China’s falling birthrate,
aging population and gender gap. Econo-
mists cite its faltering productivity, its
made-up statistics and its giant debt
bomb. And political analysts point to ever
more repressive policies from Beijing,
leading to ever greater discontent from
Hong Kong to Xinjiang.
But the coronavirus crisis has exposed a
far deeper weakness: The Chinese regime
fears information.
It was just this fear that, as my col-
league Nick Kristof pointed out, led the
government to suppress news about the
new virus — and punish whistleblowing
doctors — when it should have done the
opposite, swiftly, so as to better contain its
spread. The result was the loss of the
critical time in fighting the virus, all but
guaranteeing the global health crisis that
followed.
This sort of behavior is nothing new for
the Chinese government: It mishandled
the 2003 SARS epidemic in much the
same way. Nor is the problem specific to
China: Any regime that depends on the
manipulation or manufacture of “truth”
for its own survival is bound to act in
similar ways. That’s one of the reasons
Donald Trump’s nonstop lying and mis-
statements of fact aren’t just immoral but
also dangerous. Truth driven under-
ground doesn’t vanish. It stalks.
But the problem for the Chinese is
much more acute, for the simple reason
that they don’t have genuinely independ-
ent domestic journalism. That means that
ordinary people have no access to timely,
accurate and comprehensive information
— and neither do China’s rulers. The
result is rumor, which can be dangerous;
ignorance, which can be fatal; and miscal-
culation, which can be catastrophic.
The move against The Wall StreetJournal will compound the regime’s prob-
lems, since reporting by foreign news
organizations has often been critical in
filling the omissions and straightening the
distortions of China’s official media. It
was the Journal that did some of the most
pathbreaking work to expose the scale of
the country’s environmental catastrophes,
just as it was the Times that exposed the
extent of graft at the top of the Chinese
leadership pyramid. Other news outlets,
particularly Reuters, have done vital re-
porting on the frauds and scams endemic
in China’s economy.
Suppress this kind of reporting, and the
first people who will suffer information
blindness are China’s leaders. Every dicta-
tor needs subscriptions to the Journal and
the Times, even if they come — like
smutty magazines of yore — in inconspic-
uous brown envelopes.
It’s always possible that the regime will
think better of its move to expel the re-
porters or at least quietly let them return
in a few weeks’ time. Wise leaders, facing
a monumental crisis brought on by their
own irrational distrust of information,
would at least learn the lessons of their
folly. But there might be a truth in China
even more frightening than the co-
ronavirus — foolish rulers.
For that, no vaccine has ever been in-
vented.Bret Stephens is a New York Times
columnist.Beijing’s Great Leap Backward: A fear of information
By Bret Stephens
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang speaks on Jan. 29 during a briefing in
Beijing on the decision to expel three Wall Street Journal reporters.ANDY WONG/AP