March 19, 2024

Letters 09-26-2016

Sept. 23, 2016

Welcome To 1984

The Democrat Party, the government education complex, private corporations and foundations, the news media and the allpervasive sports and entertainment industry have incrementally repressed the foundational right of We the People to publicly debate open borders, forced immigration, sanctuary cities and the calamitous destruction of innate gender norms. Until now the oft times vicious assault on public discourse has been limited to highly-organized public shaming strategies to silence and discredit individuals and groups who do not subserviently parrot the socialist and LGBT agenda of the Democrat party. The next phase is the gutting of the First Amendment and criminalizing speech and assembly.

Welcome to George Orwell’s 1984 and the grand opening of the Federal Department of Truth!

Steve Redder, Petoskey

Grow Up, Kachadurian

Apparently Tom Kachadurian has great words; too bad they make little sense. His Sept. 19 editorial highlights his prevalent beliefs that only Hillary and the Dems are engaged in namecalling and polarizing actions. Huh? What rock does he live under up on Old Mission?

He touches on a number of hot button issues, yet blames only one side of the political aisle for divisiveness and blame. Let’s see. The Christians are being persecuted by the LGBT community even though, according to Kachadurian, "...the whole thing is a media fabrication...We are just happy to be part of the celebration..." Yep, that explains why states are enacting anti-LGBT laws resulting in companies pulling their business & events -- see the NCAA and ACC -- from places like North Carolina. His words are beautiful, especially when he pontificates and lectures us on name-calling and what he also apparently didn’t learn in the third grade.

I guess he forgot about his editorial last month (8/27/16), taking the local "Ruling Class Fixers" to task regarding Prop 3, Cambria Suites, 8th Street, and Peninsula Township among other issues. Evidently he’d rather shop at a big box retailer than support a local business owner. Clearly, you can’t be too careful -- that local business owner trying to make a living might be a part of the "Ruling Class." Or, perhaps he believes that calling people at various times rapists, crooked, lyin’, little, corrupt, etc. as Trump has over the past year is okay if you have the same beliefs. After all, Trump has great words as well, and they both use them selectively when it suits their personal agenda.

Maybe that’s what he learned in the third grade.

Craig Rosenberg, Traverse City

Facts Matter

Thomas Kachadurian’s "In the Basket" opinion deliberately chooses to twist what Clinton said. He chooses to argue that her basket lumped all into the clearly despicable categories of the racist, sexist, homophobic , etc. segments of the alt right.

Since facts and truth still matter, here is what she actually said:

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, meanspirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

... But that other basket of people who are people who feel that government has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they are just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

She later walked back the use of the word "half."

Clinton is thus obviously correct, and Kachadurian’s rebuttal is only a phony "strawman" argument.

Leonard Page, Cheboygan

Turn Off Fox, Kachadurian

I read Thomas Kachadurian’s opinion letter in last week’s issue. It seemed this opinion was the product of someone who offered nothing but what anyone could hear 24/7/365 on Fox News; a one-sided slime job that has been done better by Fox than this writer every day of the year.

According to him, the LGBT community is anti-Christian for protesting a clerk in Kentucky for not following the law. He is right in that this is a "media fabrication." It’s a Fox fabrication that the clerk isn’t committing fraud by collecting a government paycheck while refusing to do her duties. If this was government employee who failed to do a task Fox wanted done, that person would be vilified every day. Seems like a divisive media fabrication. But according to Kachadurian, it’s only words from Clinton that are divisive.

He tries to blame Democrats for the racism in his party. I don’t think that a majority of Republicans are racist, but a significant number supported Trump’s birther lies in the past. Again, this can’t be divisive because it’s from Trump, not Clinton.

It’s good that Kachadurian learned something in third grade, but it’s time to learn something new: that the ability to look at both sides is both moral and ethical. That you will know more if you turn off Fox forever. You just won’t have as many women to look at. Try it. Maybe you’ll be like former governor Milliken and former president Bush who are voting for Clinton because she wants to unite, not divide this country.

G Lueck, Traverse City

Let’s Fix This Political Process

Enough! We have been embroiled in the current election cycle for"¦well, over a year, or is it almost two? What is the benefit of this insanity? Exorbitant amounts of money are spent, candidates are under the microscope day and night, the media – now in action 24/7 – focuses on anything and everything anyone does, and then analyzes until the next event, and on it goes.

It will take a major overhaul of our election process, but there must be someone somewhere who has the courage to undertake the task and begin the process of change. What is the point of the craziness we now observe and in which we feel compelled to participate?

Laurel Mason, Arcadia

Can’t Cut Taxes

We are in a different place today. The slogan, "Making America Great Again" begs the questions, "great for whom?" and "when was it great?" I have claimed my generation has lived in a bubble since WWII, which has offered a prosperity for a majority of the people. The bubble has burst over the last few decades. The jobs which provided a good living for people without a college degree are vanishing. Unions, which looked out for the welfare of employees, have been shrinking. Businesses have sought to produce goods where labor is not expensive. Efforts to raise the minimum wage have been making some limited gains, but many families depend on two or more wages to have "enough."

To save for the future is a luxury for many, and pension plans are being abandoned as too costly. My point? The desire to cut taxes flies in the face of reality. You can fight for a better tax code. You can hold agencies accountable for their spending. But I believe the future calls for greater sacrifice for those of us who "have enough" to provide needed services for those in our counties and our schools and our neighborhoods. Cutting taxes only makes America great for those who have more than enough.

Bob McQuilkin, Frankfort

Wrong About Clinton

In response to Thomas Kachadurian’s column, I have to take issue with many of his points. First, his remarks about Ms. Clinton’s statement regarding Trump supporters was misleading. She was referring to a large segment of his supporters, not all. And the sad fact is that her statement was not a "smug notion." Rather, it was the sad truth, as witnessed by the large turnout of new voters in the primaries and the ugly incidents at so many of his rallies.

Secondly, Mr. Kachadurian’s statement that the left has chosen to make Christians the enemy is a totally ridiculous assumption. Working for the civil rights of any group of Americans is never an attack on any other group of citizens. Most practicing Christians will attest to this, but of course not the fringe groups of so-called Christians who practice bigotry and exclusion on a regular basis.

Finally, he spends quite some time criticizing Clinton for name-calling, but somehow manages to ignore the fact that Mr. Trump has taken name-calling and divisive politics to a whole new, ugly level. He speaks of the merits of citizens helping each other. Tell me, Mr. Kachadurian, what exactly has Trump ever done to help anyone other than himself, while Ms. Clinton has spent a lifetime working to help so many groups of Americans.

Ms. Clinton may not be the perfect candidate. She was not my first choice. But she is head and shoulders more qualified to lead our nation rather than a megalomaniacal demagogue, the likes of which we have never had run for this office before.

Robert Hardy, Manistee

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