I really like living in Missoula, but sometimes I have to wonder: if I were back in Maryland, would I have to read letters like this one in the daily paper?
“Five days before the presidential election last November, candidate Barack Obama said on national TV that we were five days away from revolutionizing the structure of the American government. Almost immediately after this statement he went on to say he would establish a civilian national security force as big and strong as our Army and as well-funded as the Army….
Hitler got away with this terrible endeavor in the early 1930s with his “brownshirts,” who seven to eight years later became his “Gestapo.” We are all aware of how this authority raped, pillaged and murdered millions of Europeans until early mid-1945. It’s true; history has recorded it. I want to know – all you readers want to know – what is in store for us with this outlandish proposal of a powerful civilian national security force.”
All of this from Obama’s pledge to increase the size of the Peace Corps and Foreign Service and attempt to interest Americans in “conduct[ing] renewable energy and environmental clean-up projects in their neighborhoods all across the country.”
I puzzle over why the Missoulian chooses to print letters like this one, but I suppose-if they didn’t-it would only confirm the fears of a certain segment of the population that “Obama controls the media” and opposing viewpoints are being suppressed.
As for the letter writer, Paul Bletz of Stevensville, I can only guess that obsessing over this kind of thing is a lot more interesting than learning the details of actual proposed policies.
But I can’t help but wonder how much better off we’d be as a nation if people like Bletz would lend their brainpower and rhetorical skills to debates about non-imaginary issues.
