---- Reply to Mr Temchuk's letter

 

The problem I have with Mr. Temchuk's wanting to “dash on the rocks of (their) own deceit” a “culture deserving cancellation” is who the devil he's talking about. His outrage with the obvious (racists, fascists, misogynists, etc.) I share. My concern is with the “deplorables” he throws in. Neither he nor Ms. Clinton have explained who they are. If  they're a “measurable” entity, as he asserts, then what criteria were used to determine who fit into that category? If we don't have that, are we not justified in worrying that a “deplorable” is anybody who doesn't share the Democrats' agenda?

  Other regimes have considered certain groups deplorable. Hitler on the Jews and the intellectuals who disagreed with him; Stalin on the millions of Ukrainians he starved to death; Putin on Mr. Navalny; and Xi Jinping on the Ouighours.

As for  “wokeness”, Mr. Temchuk's etymological odyssey did not alter my view: it's a religion in which success is sin; victimhood, virtue; and cancellation, the price of transgression. All kinds of people have suffered discrimination: blacks, women, Jews, gays, etc. Most got over it and moved on, without concluding they were owed special treatment or entitled to reparations ages later. There was no unseemly competition among them as to who had been the most victimized and no effort to sully the good names of people like John A. Macdonald.  Guilt trips do nothing to improve harmony.

Ronald Lefebvre

Aylmer