 |
| Inundation Zone of Proposed Dam: San Joaquin River Gorge |
Note: The Fresno Bee coincidentally stopped publishing my
letters to the editor around the time I started opposing a dam at Temperance
Flat, a dam that the Bee wholeheartedly supports, so unfortunately
every now and then I'm going to include what might have been a letter
to the editor in this space.
According to Fred Vanderhoof,
chairman of the Fresno County Republican Party, a bully is going to
harass farmers, business men and pastors if Hillary Clinton is
elected, a bully with two terrifying faces: regulation and socialism.
This bully will tear our constitution and all of our cherished rights
to pieces.
I started to wonder what this
bully actually looks like. Perhaps Mr. Vanderhoof is referring to the
bully who prohibits child labor, sweatshops, job discrimination and
exploitation, the bully who puts the breaks on wall-street greed, the
bully who stops polluters and corporate malfeasance.
Could this bully also look like
police officers, firemen and teachers? These people, after all, get
paid by state and local governments, with hefty support from the
federal government. What about the soldier, the postal worker, the
social worker, and all the others who labor for the federal
government? Bullying socialists all?
I'm not sure exactly what Mr.
Vanderhoof means because Republicans often use a type of doublespeak
that contains one level of meaning for insiders and another for those
easily frightened by the bogeyman.
Mr. Vanderhoof wants to get
government off our backs, I guess. I'm also guessing that he means
that taxpayers should stop propping up farmers with subsidies and
businessmen with grants, and that the public should never provide funds
to build more dams (which primarily benefit farmers) on public lands.
We must stop socialism to make America great again!
Sadly, one of Mr. Vanderhoof's
points is already moot: Water diversions are killing off
an offending species of fish—only one delta smelt was found in the
wild in a recent scientific survey. I'm sure Mr. Vanderhoof is aware
that most of the rivers in the Valley are dead, mainly because the
government built numerous dams, and eighty percent of the water is
diverted to the farmers. Someone should explain to Mr. Vanderhoof
that you can't kill a fish (or a whole species) more than once.
The government, if Hillary is
elected, will even bully our gentle pastors. How is this possible?
Mr. Vanderhoff doesn't say, possibly because the separation of church
and state effectively keeps religion and government away from each
other most of the time. Is this Mr. Vanderhoof's code for the
possibility that the "bully" government might allow gay marriage and
keep Roe v. Wade, even though this might offend some pastors? Or is
he concerned that the government might keep some fanatic pro-lifer
with Judeo-Christian beliefs from blowing up Planned Parenthood?
Unfortunately, Mr. Vanderhoof's language is incendiary but lacks
specificity.
 |
| San Joaquin River Gorge: Temperance Flat Dam Inundation Area |
Do industry or business or
religion ever intrude into our lives? Wasn't it the unrestrained
greed allowed by deregulation that resulted in the recent economic
meltdown, which has made it harder for just about all of us? In Mr.
Vanderhoof's world, do businessmen ever rip people off or exploit
them? Do pastors ever intrude into our bedrooms to tell us how we
can love or what to do with our bodies? Haven't water diversions for
farmers killed most of the rivers and destroyed our ecosystems?
Haven't their chemicals polluted our water and air? Mr. Vanderhoof
can't seem to decide whether government is a bully or a cancer: Does
he ever see the need to regulate toxic chemicals that cause real
cancers and other health problems?
Mr. Vanderhoof fails to mention
that the very people he wants to protect from “bully government”
have often created the need for regulation through their criminality,
their lack of civic responsibility, or their intrusiveness in our
lives. He also fails to mention that socialism has propped up many of
these same people in different ways, including subsidies and grants.
I hope voters can see through Mr. Vanderhoof''s deceptive, byzantine code and vote for Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, a man who has truly revealed himself to
be a bully.
No comments:
Post a Comment