Category Archives: Letters to the Editor

Yeah, but…George Orwell’s doublethink affects war.

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To the Editor:
    There were many photographic images from Vietnam that turned public opinion against that war:  a young naked girl running from a village that had been hit with napalm, bodies of women and children lying in a ditch at My Lai, bombs falling like rain from B-52s.  A particularly graphic picture was of a Vietnamese general killing a handcuffed man suspected of being Viet Cong with a pistol shot to the head.  These images flew in the face of a general belief that we were not only there justly but that we “respected life” differently than did other races.  War scrambles ideas in odd ways (the My Lai massacre became a war crime, but napalm, white phosphorus, saturation bombing, and Agent Orange did not) but George Orwell was brilliant in linking Doublespeak and perpetual war in the slogan, War is Peace.  Such “Doublethink” allows us to accept that which is not true as Truth, that we are righteous when we are not, and, let’s face it, we are there.  Torture is termed “enhanced interrogation”, the death of innocent people is “collateral damage”, “saving lives”, never an issue in revolutions across Black Africa, is a rationale for firing cruise missiles into oil-producing Libya, not having “boots on the ground” means we are not engaged while predator drones serve as emotionally detached, video game assassins.  The saddest part is that, unlike mental illness, Doublethink is a conscious disconnect from reality.  Those who believe assassination is “justice served” are, in truth, following in the same footsteps as John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, and Osama Bin Laden himself.  We know it, but we don’t care.
RP

A Time of Assassins

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To the Editor:
Despite all the cheering over the killing of Osama Bin Laden, I felt a deep sadness not only that assassination has become so widely accepted as an American military and diplomatic tool, but also that, as a nation, we have again chosen to move forward in history by killing people.  If Bin Laden were indeed unarmed, do we attribute his death to a Presidential directive or to a soldier acting individually in a tense moment?  Will his death have any lasting effect on our “War on Terror”, a war that more and more seems to have no ending point?  Warfare is deeply entrenched in America’s history, but it should be noted that being in a permanent state of war is precisely what brought down Athens, the city-state generally regarded as the foundation of  democracy and of Western civilization itself.  It is a shame that Martin Luther King’s legacy of non-violent action is now so cavalierly termed “childishly naive”.
RP

Loving Ayn Rand

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To the Editor:
    It is no surprise that Conservatives, who see themselves as part of a plutocratic elite destined to power, would find affinity with the Superman myths of Ayn Rand’s writing.  However, while heroic individualism is one part of human survival, a successful culture is one with a social contract that balances the needs of society with those of the individual.  Ben Franklin can be called a hero for establishing the U.S. Postal Service as an institution that benefited all of America.  Under Ms. Rand’s generally sociopathic philosophy, he was a fool for not doing it for his own profit.  Then again, maybe if the Post Office issued a “Forever Stamp” honoring Ayn Rand, Republicans might start supporting our postal workers.
RP

Whither goest thou?

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To the Editor:
Given China’s economic gains, the possibility rises that it may be following a business model superior to our current path.  Unlike here, the Chinese government has a firm oversight of its growing economy.  Compensation is regulated, profits benefit the entire nation, and corruption and mismanagement are severely punished, even to the point of death.  Here, on the other hand, corporate campaign money controls the government, with  lobbyists actually writing regulatory legislation.  CEO’s are compensated royally, profits go mainly to a small, already wealthy, elite class, and mismanagement is often rewarded with a year-end bonus. Tax breaks were even given to companies for taking their jobs and technical expertise overseas.
Further, China has generally relied on a traditional capitalist approach to gaining prosperity.  It is investing money (much of it American consumer dollars) in its manufacturing and transportation infrastructure, in education for its youth, and in peacefully securing resources for its industrial growth, while we in the West have gotten so bogged down in unending wars and occupation of oil-producing nations in the Middle East that our longstanding support for education, infrastructure, and social safety nets is now being termed, “no longer affordable”.  This seems an odd tale of two nations heading in vastly divergent directions.
RP

Humanitarian War

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To the Editor
American history is filled with a long and almost continuous succession of wars.  From the beginning we fought wars of independence, of unification and expansion.  We fought a “War to End All Wars” and a “World War” against two powerful nations with ambitions of Empire and then embarked upon a “Cold War” during which we amassed a mind-boggling nuclear arsenal aimed at the Soviet Union, formerly an invaluable ally against Nazi Germany.  During this time, despite the warning of departing President Dwight Eisenhower against the rise of a “Congressional military industrial complex”, the budget for the War Department , expediently renamed the Department of Defense, grew astronomically.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the vanished threat of nuclear war and spread of global Communism, a hope of beating our swords into plowshares briefly arose until the attacks of 911 elevated the threat level of a few thousand Third World radical Islamists somehow equal to that of Hitler. Mussolini, Tojo, and a possible nuclear holocaust.  We have been engaged in “hot” wars in the Middle East ever since and our “defense” budget exceeds that of the rest of the world combined.  We are also the largest exporter of military hardware and, sadly, we have no jobs available should we begin bringing our soldiers home.  And now, despite Martin Luther King’s shining legacy of non-violence in the Civil Rights Movement and Barack Obama’s (perhaps only hopefully pre-emptive) Nobel Prize for Peace, in our “humanitarian war” in Libya we seem to have fully achieved the double-think mindset of George Orwell’s 1984 that, indeed, “War is Peace”.  It is not a comfortable place to be.
RP

My name is Joe and I’ll be your server tonight.

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To the Editor:
Just as a “modest” proposal, I would like to suggest that our so-called “Defense” budget could be covered by a heavy surtax on the profits of every international corporation currently investing in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is time for the Pentagon to begin handing out invoices for “services rendered”, and the tips to their “servers” should be huge.
RP

Reinstate the Rebate

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To the Editor:
Inexplicitly unreported in Colorado media was that during the Super Bowl Week cold snap there was a natural gas shortage that resulted in frozen water pipes and people shivering in their homes in Taos and northern New Mexico.  Coming at the heels of record gas exploration and drilling, this should serve notice to those who see natural gas as the rescuing cavalry storming across the West to meet our energy needs:  Don’t bury your heads in the (coal bed) sand.  It is time for fossil fuel proponents to ride slowly off into the sunset.  Excel Energy’s cutting off of rebates to those installing solar energy panels has more to do with serving its profit margin than being of public service.  Hopefully the Public Utilities Commission will recognize this and reinstate the rebates.
RP

Note: This appeared in the Boulder Weekly a few weeks ago.

Social Security

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To the Editor:
Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post is dead wrong.  Social Security is not welfare.  It is a public investment in a retirement account that is not subject to the whims, speculations, miscalculations, market declines, profit margins, bonuses, and criminal activity of the same financial class which created our current economic collapse and stagnation.  Apparently not just content with sitting on their billions in profits and offshore accounts after receiving taxpayer bailout money, apparently in hopes of undermining a Democratic presidency, the financial industry wants to further tap in on the American worker’s paycheck. The chutzpah of these people is endless.

RP

Paper Tiger Redux. Chinese government has mastered capitalism.

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To the Editor:

You have to hand it to the communist Chinese government for its capitalist acumen.  Not only are they utilizing their vast labor resources to manufacture and sell nearly everything the American consumer buys, they are investing that money in natural resources all around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and also earning US Treasury interest on the billions we have borrowed, including the funding for our invasion and occupation of two nations now open to global corporate exploitation.  With the Federal Reserve again madly printing money to try to stimulate our anemic economy, it would seem we have indeed become the “Paper Tiger” Chairman Mao always said we were, however, the big question is:  is our military being used for the safety and well-being of America or for the profit of international corporate interests?

RP