June 22, 2017
To whom it may concern:
These are the letters nobody wants. The first of them has been ignored by the Missoulian editor and oped editor to this day. The second required a number of reassuring phone calls to the Great Falls Tribune were I was initially informed I had been banished to the no print list years ago. After much holding of hands the editor in charge said he would print this one but probably without any mention of Hillary and Donald jumping in the shower with children. Apparently that scared him. Me too.
But these papers have at least accepted my emailed letters (the Missoulian has printed a few over the years) as have the papers in Bozeman and Billings. The paper in Helena wanted nothing to do with them pretty much from the get-go. They informed me of that by a circuitous route that made its way through a magazine and its email account that I had never heard of and was never on my mailing list. That took some figuring. But I tracked them back to the paper and they admitted they wanted no part of my letters.
Now if you think you detect a hint of cranky in these sentences you are quite right. In this age of reporters rudely buttonholing politicians then claiming some imaginary first amendment protection for their bad manners the media has it coming, sometimes. But sometimes they have good reasons to keep their heads down. For this retreat from journalism is actuated by fear of all the nasty people who have the means to hurt them..
Nevertheless, we shouldn’t forget the sometimes messy divorce from anything that makes sense by much of the media. For instance the New York Times published a poorly reasoned, roughly written letter from Cokie Roberts denigrating Alexander Hamilton and even Eliza. The NY Times liked it. Crappy prose and nothing in the way of a reasoned argument made it a sure bet to land on their pages. Well, those were fighting words, so I wrote a pretty good letter back. My guess is the Times didn’t for one moment consider publishing it.
These are just my opinions if you disagree write a letter.
Sincerely,
Lynn Swartos
June 16, 2017
Please accept this 300 word letter for publication.
Lynn Swartos
1110 W. Broadway
Missoula, MT 59802
A summer shower has passed yet the stunted reasoning of Rick West remains. West the Justice of the Peace in the Greg Gianforte trial has said, “I think some jail time here would be appropriate” because he wanted to treat Gianforte like any other offender.
His juridical ignorance is appalling tension between discretion and legalism is part of law. And if West had made an effort to understand equality he would realize that while we are equally subject to law, the principle does not exclude mitigating conditions, indeed requires their examination to arrive at an equal justice. Discretion is a prerequisite for justice. Otherwise judgeships would be largely irrelevant.
Gianforte and Jacobs had settled the matter to their satisfaction. But the judge perhaps influenced by the milling mob outside his courtroom, some calling for the arrant imposition of prejudice has forced the matter to extreme legalism raising the possibility of Gianforte’s being booked.
West, having shed any pretension to intellectual honor, has joined that mob and that makes him a mobster. [If the good judge should read this he ought to understand this is a play on words.]
Declan Lawson has written an essay decrying the lack of protection under the law for LGBTQs, citing egregious examples of alleged violence against homosexuals for which the law provides penalties enforced according to due process, but not further penalties that add unequal punishment. He is irked by this lack. Despite the factitious pleading for equality he desires inequality and a eudaemonic revenge. This is dangerous ground.
Moreover, what do we say, for example, to those who can be denied medical care if they do not make the gay gatekeeper to such care happy? Or to those who avoid care because gay employees make inappropriately suggestive comments? Or to those who are offended by their unwelcome sexual advances? We can only say homosexuals are not held to an equal standard.
(Missoulian, June 12, 2017)
[Missoulian, June 16, 2017]
9/24/2016
Tribune/editorial
Great Falls, MT
To whom it may concern:
Please accept this 250 word letter for publication.
Lynn Swartos
326 2nd Ave. South
Great Falls, MT 59405
September 23, 2016
It is no secret that education is in a relativistic decline. Thus in a recent article blithely drawn from the shallows of malice and given shape by fallacy a veteran of “education” Lawrence Pettit offers us the wisdom of his distorted reality, the product of a relativistic academia and his agenda of hate: science, says Pettit, demonstrates Trump voters to be perforce authoritarians.
This however exposes him as rather ignorant and a bit vicious. What Trump supporters are, and what he ignores, is their republicanism and their political homelessness. They are working class voters who have lived through the loss of millions of jobs and the subversion of law. The politicians they voted for have ignored the country, and made a mess; they would like someone to clean it up. Hence they are drawn to Trump because he is an unconscionable manipulator who will say and promise anything to get elected—Hillary can be just as demagogic but she is tied to her identity politics, she cannot promise them that she and Donald will not jump in the shower with their children.
Pettit presents us with his resume to justify his calumny, but his resume cannot justify slandering persons, who want to see their country free and prosperous, by comparing them to unthinking automatons waiting on instructions from corrupt leaders who claim to know what is best for us. Tocqueville described a republic as that in which society acts on itself. It was; and that is anathema to these people.
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