Rapid City Journal from Rapid City, South Dakota • D2

D2 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2018 RAPID CITY JOURNAL 00 1 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR YFS thanks Altrusa Club Youth Family Services (YFS) would like to thank the members of the Altrusa Club of Rapid City for the volunteer support they provide throughout the year. especially grateful for their recent assistance with the Summer Food Program. Altrusa volunteers spent their summer afternoons, Monday through Friday, greeting children and families who attended Summer Food Program. They met our guests with a warm, friendly helped ensure that each child was given a com- plete lunch, and assisted with re- cordkeeping tasks. Thank you Altrusa members for giving of your time, serving others, and sharing a smile with each of our diners.

all out- standing, and we appreciate the di erence making in our community. Darcie Decker Rapid City A Lee Enterprises Newspaper 507 Main Rapid City, SD 57701 rapidcityjournal.com/opinion Editorial Board CHRIS HUBER Editor PATRICK BUTLER Managing Editor CANDACE DENOUDEN Online Editor MARK ANDERSEN Editorial Page Editor BRANDIS KNUDSEN Sales Manager Resumes from inexperienced job seekers list every success, large and small, promising to be earnest. Experienced can-didates enumerate only the major accomplishments they led. Unless pay is a concern, employers seldom opt for inexperi- ence. In the race for South Dakota attorney general, the impressive resume of former U.S.

Attorney Randy Seiler towers over that of Yankton attorney Jason Ravnsborg. Except for the behind his name, Seiler should be assured victory on Nov. 6. He should be elected anyway. The most critical role of the state attorney general is to set the tone for prosecutions, making tough calls based on real, broad experience.

The Journal endorses Democrat Randy Seiler for attorney general because of his demonstrated ability to lead prosecutors. Ravnsborg, a Republican, has an impressive military background, years of work in civil law, and he has supported the Republican Party by working to defeat four initiated measures. In ex- change, his party rewarded him with this nomi- nation. Ravnsborg is young and ambitious he ran for U.S. Senate as a 38-year-old in 2014.

As the Army Reserve commander of a transportation battalion, performing service in both Iraq and Afghanistan, he has demonstrated leadership. He is pro-life and pro-Second Amendment. But a big hole in his resume: Ravnsborg has minimal if any experience as a prosecutor in criminal case jury trials. It matters. In South Dakota, the letters AG have long implied aspiring to governor.

For at least a generation, however, every Republican AG candidate has brought some prosecutorial experience to the post. Current AG Marty Jackley had served as U.S. Attorney for the District of South Dakota and was named the 2008 South Dakota Prosecutor of the Year. Larry Long, AG from 2003 to 2009, had been the chief deputy attorney general. Mark Barnett, AG from 1991 to 2002, had served as the attorney for Hughes County.

Roger Tellinghuisen, AG from 1987 to 1991, had been Lawrence County attorney. Tellinghuisen and Mark Meierhenry, the Republican AG before him, have both endorsed Seiler. Campaign slipups prevented Ravnsborg from accepting two invitations from the Journal editorial board to present his case. On his campaign website, Ravnsborg pledges to travel to every county, every year; lead from the front by discussing the import- ant issues of the day and ordering solutions; keep his door open for anyone to come visit and ask questions or report concerns; and be a strong advocate for law enforcement. Seiler, a Vietnam veteran who has prosecuted 70 jury trials and has experience in 500 felony cases, set these goals: Address the opioid and meth problems in South Dakota; address the lack of transparency and icts of interest that have mired state government; and protect consumers, especially the elderly, from scams.

As former U.S. attorney for the District of South Dakota, Seiler essentially performed the role of attorney general for the federal courts. He resigned after changes in the White House foreshad- owed his inevitable departure. Seiler has no plans to seek an- other elected ce after becoming attorney general. He spend the next four years leaning on experienced sta while campaigning for governor.

He has no reason to waste taxpayer dollars by playing politics with the rule of law. Seiler has represented the victims of homicide, child sexual abuse and rape. As U.S. attorney, Seiler directed his ce to partner with health care providers to promote the rights of peo- ple with disabilities, and combat child sexual abuse, opioid ad- diction and human tra cking. He has worked with tribal leaders to foster government-to-government relationships.

He also led his civil, appellate and administrative divisions. His resume stands out. South Dakota voters need to select Seiler the best candidate to ll the real and demanding job of attorney general. WASHINGTON If Sen. Ben Sasse is right he has not recently been wrong about anything important the most-discussed political problem is entangled with the least-understood pub- lic health problem.

The political problem is furious partisanship. The public health problem is loneliness. new book ar- gues that Americans are richer, more informed and than ever and unhappier, more isolated and less lled. In Why We Hate Each Other and How to subject is evaporation of so- cial the satisfactions of work and com- munity. This ects a perverse phenomenon: What has come to count as connectedness is displacing the real thing.

And matters might quickly become dramatically worse. Loneliness in pro- is producing a liness of sociological and medical ndings about the ect of loneliness on individ- brains and bodies, and on communities. Sasse says is a growing that loneliness not obesity, cancer or heart disease is the one health sistent reduces aver- age longevity more than twice as much as does heavy drinking and more than three times as much as obesity, which often is a con- sequence of loneliness. Research demonstrates that loneliness is as physically dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and contrib- utes to cognitive decline, includ- ing more rapid advance of Alzhei- disease. Sasse says, literally dying of of the failure ll the hole millions of Americans feel in their Symptoms large and small are everywhere.

Time was, Sasse notes, Americans their imaginations with the same In the 1950s, frequently 70 percent of television sets in use tuned in to Love To- day, when 93 percent of Amer- icans have access to more than 500 channels, the most-watched cable news program, has about 1 percent of the U.S. population. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the average number of times Americans entertained at home declined almost 50 percent. Americans are hyperconnected but discon- nected, with non-virtual friends than at any point in de- With the median Ameri- can checking a smartphone every 4.3 minutes, and with nearly 40 percent of those 18 to 29 online almost every waking minute, we are to and for genuine com- Social media, those of that Sasse calls accelerants for polit- ical anger, create a nuance-free for And for people for whom enemies have the psy- chic value of giving life coher- ence. Work, which Sasse calls the most fundamental anchor of human is at the beginning of stagger- ing level of cultural swifter and more radical than even transformation from a rural and agricultural to an urban and industrial nation.

At that time, one response to so- cial disruption was alcoholism, which begat Prohibition. Today, one reason the average American life span has declined for three consecutive years is that many more are dying of drug over- doses one of the of annually than died during the entire Vietnam War. People to be but McKinsey Co. analysts calcu- late that, globally, 50 percent of paid activities jobs could be automated by currently demon- strated technologies. largest job category is and, with self-driving vehicles coming, two-thirds of such jobs could disappear in a decade.

This future of accelerating ux exhilarates the educated and so- cially nimble. It frightens those who, their work identities erased and their communities atomized, are tempted not by what Sasse calls local but by political tribalism of grievances, or by chemical oblivion, or both. The crumbling of social infrastructure presents a daunting challenge: We do not know how to develop what Sasse wants, habits of mind and heart new practices of neigh- We do know that more government, which means more saturation of society with poli- tics, is not a su cient answer. Sasse, a fth-generation Ne- braskan who dedicates his book to the Kiwanis and Rotary clubs and other little platoons of Fre- mont, Nebraska (population wants to rekindle the night But Americans go home again to Fremont. George Will is a columnist for the Washington Post.

a stone-cold how a Republican insider I know described Kristi Noem the other day during a conversation about the gover- race. And in that political context, it was a compliment. Noem is hardly a hit-woman in her regular life, of course. a 46-year-old wife and mother of three who loves horses and dogs and church hymns and sporting events. Pretty reg- ular South Dakota stu But just as she knows how to swing her shotgun at a rising rooster during the pheasant season, Noem hesitate to pull the trigger in a political campaign.

And a pretty good shot. Never defeated in two state legislative runs and four straight U.S. House races, Noem now faces her biggest challenge since she beat formidable Democratic incumbent Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in 2010. Noem was the new kid on the statewide political block back then, and her upset win sent the already faltering Dem- ocratic party in South Dakota tumbling toward irrelevance. Billie Sutton has become the best chance the party has to stop its painful descent.

This race is close, really close. an assertion based not just on internal polling released by the Sutton campaign showing the Democrat with a 3-point lead. Reliable word has it that polling for the Noem campaign shows her with a similarly small lead. Either is within the margin of er- ror of such polls. So a statisti- cal dead heat.

That in itself is a bit of a vic- tory for Sutton less than a month before the election in a state that chosen a Democratic gov- ernor since 1974 a state where Republicans top Democrats in registered voters by 90,000 or so. And odds are still good that come Nov. 6 enough of those Repub- licans will to give Noem the victory. But far from certain. And the next three weeks will be the toughest, most ning part of the race.

Noem inch at tough. She showed that against Herseth Sandlin eight years ago and against Marty Jackley in the GOP primary last spring. I call Sutton stone- cold in a campaign. But clear that despite a nice-guy image that seems genuine, the 34-year-old rancher and banker from Burke inch at tough, either. Why would he, given an inspiring life story that, by now, any sentient human be- ing in South Dakota should know.

But for the sleep-walkers among us, a summary: Sutton was a hot young bronc rider who was paralyzed from the waist down when a horse fell on him at a North Dakota rodeo. He found the strength, support and will to start a new career, a family and a political life, one he hopes will take him to the chair. Like Sutton, Noem has been pushing positive ads about her- self. But she went negative weeks ago with a hard-edged attack ad against Sutton. We can expect similar attacks in the upcoming debates.

Sutton has lately shown some campaign callus himself with an ad including attering pictures of Noem and a foundation of facts creatively twisted into cam- paign rhetoric. I was a little sur- prised by that ad with more than a month left in the race. Sutton seemed to be doing pretty well without the nasty stu Sure, you have to defend your- self. But I wonder how giving up the high ground on the attack-ad issue will a ect standing with some voters. pretty tough, after all, to beat a stone-cold killer at her own game.

Kevin Woster writes a blog and ers radio commentary for South Dakota Public Broadcasting. He can be reached by emailing pick for attorney general of SD How to heal loneliness? Billie, Kristi square at high noon GEORGE WILL OPINION Letters to the editor MAIL: Rapid City Journal, PO Box 450, Rapid City, SD 57709 PHONE: 394-8434 FAX: 394-8463 EMAIL: rapidcityjournal.com Letters limited to 200 words and must include full name, address, phone number and signature. Two per month. Letters may be edited. OURS Seiler COMMENTARY COMMENTARY KEVIN WOSTER.