Response full of theatrics, fallacies
How wonderful to hear from our old friend Bob Rock, once again rebuffing information he knows little about in our town of which he does not live. To his credit though, I may have been confused as well (when I saw the Editor’s title to my letter, “Communism creeping into the Cowichan Valley”) in thinking that it was a statement instead of a query, because the question mark was missing. Nevertheless, the gist should have become apparent upon comprehension and cerebral digestion of the content.
It is unfortunate that my questions raised on external political influence, charity use for political intention, and abuse of voter trust were not addressed by Mr. Rock, from which we could have engaged in constructive conversation. Instead we are greeted with innuendo, ad hominem attack, demands to stop talking, theatrics, and straw-man fallacies, the latter of which is ironic.
The irony is that the straw-man in this case is none other than Isaac Asimov who, in addition to loving the beauty of the robotic man, advocated for communism while ignoring its horrors playing out before him. He did not understand basic human psychology and failed to elucidate the fact that ignorance and expertise are invariably equal on all sides of every issue. What he also failed to grasp is that it is the mutual trust and the meeting in the middle that is important, not the elitist point of view.
Turning away from this straw man we can instead focus our attention on the issues. Many taxpayers in the Cowichan Valley have recently become aware of local organizations operating under the influence and guidance of forces external to our valley; that being the Transition Network. The Transition Network follows a Marxist collectivism ideology. Marxist theory implemented is called communism, ergo the coda. Taxpayers have recently been made privy to this network’s ideology and its desire to infiltrate towns and take them over under the auspices of, among other things, a climate emergency.
To be clear, in speaking of earth’s evolutionary cycles of climate, I have made no attack on the environmental topic, as suggested by our old friend. To insinuate that I view solar farms and wind turbines as a communist plot is amusing. That would be a stretch even for poor old Alonso. But to make it even more fun we are treated to the image of communists under every bed….only augmented by visions of tag-teams and cheering sections. Seriously? Why so much drama? Instead, why not simply have a conversation on the information, the facts, the questions asked, and the concerns presented?
Diane Moen
North Cowichan