Zaleski: ND politics; a great novel – INFORUM

From politics to books, a little potpourri this week:

High praise for Forum News Service columnist and podcaster Rob Port, who has done exceptional work exposing the hypocrisy and dishonesty of a faction of the North Dakota Republican Party that seems hellbent on destroying the party. Port’s commentaries are based on information from reliable sources and on plain ol’ spade-work reporting. The result is a portrait of a political party in creeping chaos, beset by a cabal of ideological thugs that is eroding the party’s foundational values.

As leadership goes, the state GOP is hardly recognizable as the party of former governors Ed Schafer, Jack Dalrymple and (now U.S. senator) John Hoeven. All were political builders and conservative icons. They would not be welcome in today’s homophobic, nativist and ethically challenged gang. The new leadership came close a few days ago to censuring Congressman Kelly Armstrong, one of the more thoughtful conservative voices in the U.S. House. (A low bar, to be sure, but nevertheless…) And they continue to target Republican legislators who refuse to drink every drop of their pernicious ideological swill. Heck, Ronald Reagan would be anathema to this gaggle of political bullies.

The crazies are taking over. Divisions in the party are deepening. Sensible Republicans – the people who built the party – seem impuissant. The “new” agenda is anything but inclusive. Port’s journalism has unmasked GOP leaders who blithely dissemble, and arrogantly manipulate party rules to advance a toxic agenda.

I’m into a third reading of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” (Viking Press 1939), his Pulitzer Prize-winning saga about a sharecropper family in the Great Depression. It was assigned in high school. I returned to it about 25 years ago, and again last week. It never disappoints. It’s a favorite, not only for Steinbeck’s remarkable writing style, but also for his insights into equality and justice at a time when thousands of people were forced off the land during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

Protagonist Tom Joad is one of the great figures in American literature. His displaced tenant farmer family is a study in love, dysfunction and cultural divides. The story of their journey from drought-ravaged Oklahoma to California’s false promised land is compelling, tragic and noble. (The John Ford directed 1940 film starring Henry Fonda is good, too, although the last half of the movie and ending stray from the book’s plot.)

Steinbeck’s best? For me, yes. Of course, “East of Eden” and “Of Mice and Men” also are among the great American novels of that era. So for some readers, it’s a toss-up among those three. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 for his body of work, the committee noting his “realistic and imaginative writings, combining … sympathetic humor and keen social perception.” They got it right.

As for the writing in “The Grapes of Wrath”: I challenge you to find a better description of drought than is found in the first chapter. It’ll make you thirsty.

Zaleski retired in 2017 after 30 years as The Forum’s editorial page editor. He is the author of a

new history of Forum Communications Company

. Contact him at

jzaleski@forumcomm.com

or 701-241-5521 or 701-566-3576.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Forum’s editorial board nor Forum ownership.