On communism, conservatism, and misinformation
The Commies are coming! The Commies are coming!
Or is it nothing more than the continued paranoia, fueled by QAnon conspiracies, the need by some to push disinformation, driving the flood of letters by some writers to the paper to warn us of a non existent communist infiltration of the Cowichan Valley?
The answer is obvious to me, but I do thank the editor for lining up all the daff(y) duck letters in a row for me to take shots at.
Actually, I never take what Ms. Moen writes too seriously, although I read them with much bemusement tinged with sadness to think you and the others are in such a rush to prove Asimov right with each letter shunning facts, historical context, and making nonsensical links between things which have no connection to each other.
Take your claim that Asimov was a communist. Wrong, Ms. Moen. He was investigated by the FBI way back in the 60s because it was assumed that any academic was a target for the communists to indoctrinate to their side. The FBI never found any evidence whatsoever that he was in anyway compromised in his personal or profession life.
Then we have Mr. Innis making the moronic link between those supporting Transition Town and its laudable goals of sustainable economics and agriculture, having us prepare for Peak Oil which will happen sooner rather than later, which will have Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge create a Soviet style collective by stealth disguised as environmentally minded individuals and groups to bring the Killing Fields to the Cowichan Valley. Do you ever read what you write before sending out that kind of nonsense?
As for Mr. Perry, I wish he would take a course in basic economics before making his claims. I majored in Economics & Commerce, with a minor in History, at university. I was trained in Keynesian Economic Theory before Free Trade, Free Market, and predatory capitalism drove the middle class and common good to near extinction in the race to the bottom through the Trickle-Down Economy hyped by Alan Greenspan.
Yet Mr. Foster keeps pushing the ridiculous notion that Conservatives are champions of the people because they are all about cutting budgets and says that just look at how progressive John Diefenbaker was. True, he backed the Bill of Rights. But otherwise, he was a failure as a prime minister. No one should ever forget how he put the prototypes of the Avro Arrow on the bottom of one of the Great Lakes.
But besides that, what conservatism meant back in the dark ages before a true reformer, Pierre Trudeau became prime minister, is nothing like the social conservatism of today. A social conservatism driven by reactionary right-wing religious and political forces hell bent of pushing their anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-immigration, and just about anti-everything except tax relief for the richest people and corporations in society.
It is not rocket science that when Harper, Bush, and now Trump, gave trillions in tax cuts to the very wealthy, encouraged the corporations to ship jobs overseas, that the middle class paid a huge price.
Don’t confuse the wisdom of living within a personal budget to the vital role that government has in moderating the economy. To pump money into the nation when recession looms or to cut spending if inflation gets out of control.
It would seem, that Mr. Foster would rather people starve in this pandemic and end up on the streets with his denouncing the Liberals in Ottawa for spending money to keep the country from going into a worse depression than the Great Depression was.
Sorry about the length of this letter but on one hand there was the misinformation and out and out delusional ideas that the Commies are coming by Mr. Innis and Ms. Moen to respond to. And Perry Foster pushing the fallacies about how wonderful Conservatism is for people. I guess in his alternative world that the U.S. is a paradise instead of being one step from collapse as the rich get ridiculously richer and everyone else suffering.
Robert T. Rock
Mission City