LTE: Sinking too low

Editor, Gettysburg Times,

I understand that our politics have become so debased that one side has been captured by people who routinely – on the pages of your paper – compare any Democratic policy they disagree with to the Holocaust and call for Democrats to be assassinated.

But even with that low set of expectations, your decision to run a propaganda piece above the fold as a news story, as you did on July 31, is disgraceful. The group you profile has earned a national reputation for bullying school boards and censoring school curricula and seeking to fire any teacher who doesn’t teach “happy talk” history. Yet you print what amounts to a 2000 word press release, saying uncritically that they advocate “the best interests of children.” You even print their slander of a local teacher and the nonsense that schools are teaching “Critical Race Theory” and “1619 project”—and the even more ridiculous claim that it’s really white conservatives who are being bullied in schools and that the well-documented instances of racial discrimination – well, they didn’t happen. And you don’t print a single word from a school board member or from the teacher they slandered.

But disgraceful as that was, it’s Pulitzer Prize material compared to the cartoon you ran on July 30. What is that cartoon saying? People who risked their lives to defend the Capitol and the first two members of the presidential line of succession are subject matter for a joke. Expressing concern about the police gets the dismissive “violin and tissues” treatment. Really? Have we sunk that far?

It seems odd that Republican politicians are treating the Capitol Hill police as enemies. They’ve made these excuses that nothing bad happened – or it was Antifa – or the FBI. But their behavior shows that they know their claims are ridiculous. If they thought it was Antifa, they’d be heaping praise on the police for defending the Capitol against these violent anarchists. The fact that they continue to treat the police as the enemy – and concern about their well-being as a joke – shows they know that the Capitol Hill police were fighting and defending the Capitol from their friends.

The antiwar movement went wrong when they treated Vietnam vets as “baby killers.” The right is treating everyone who doesn’t subscribe to their ridiculous lies about the election as enemies — — and even traitors to the country.

Leon Reed,
Gettysburg