Two letters to the editor caught my attention this week.
The first, written by Mike Hawryluk on July 5, starts out badly with the assumption that "if you think Donald Trump is a fool, then you must think that Justin Trudeau is a genius. So obviously you're wrong on one of those conceptions."
Trump has proven himself a genius at least at gathering right-wing votes while not joining the Tea Party and he won the presidential endorsement of the Republican Party while not catering to the entrenched Republican establishment. However Mr. Trump could also take some of the blame for the Orlando killings. Perhaps the fact it occurred on Latino night suggests the killer had an anti-immigrant, not just an anti-gay, agenda.
Trudeau could well be a genius as well, quite ready to be prime minister, as Stephen Harper readily admitted, at the start of his last term, by launching an anti-Trudeau hate campaign. The ads said Trudeau wasn't ready to be PM but the actions of the Conservative Party led by Harper, strongly suggested they thought otherwise.
As for Trudeau "kissing the butt of every minority group," isn't that what the Conservatives did with the gun lobbyists and the religious right both far in the minority in Canada these days?
Your other points may have some merit but it's hard to take them seriously after this type of analysis.
The second letter was written by Art Betke on July 7, titled Brexit best for Britain, most of which I agree with.
Britain should leave. Mr. Betke fails to mention many Britons, (and Germans), balked at bailing out dysfunctional governments like Greece.
Maybe Mr. Betke watches a different CBC than I do but they usually show both sides of an argument. My cousin lives in England and in 2002 I told him his rants about the gypsies, foreigners, and other Eastern Europeans invading the country sounded racist to me. He voted for Brexit. He and others there seemed to bunch all Eastern Europeans by the derogatory term gypsies.
The job losses and poverty self-inflicted on areas of Yorkshire under the Thatcher government may well have resulted from right-wing policies favouring an immigrant work force, anti-union actions, and inclusion in the EU.
Ronald Reagan in the U.S. (remember he fired 12,000 unionized air traffic controllers) also led the U.S. down globalization paths and a future 2008 monetary crisis. The transformation of the EU from a supersized free trade agreement was not stealthly transformed into a political union as Mr. Betke claims.
That was its very reason for being, as my economics professor told us back in the 1960s. Peace through political union. The only clear downers to leaving the EU is an image of a country unwilling to help war refugees like their EU partners not to mention the problem of the high Scottish vote to stay.
Alan Martin, Prince George
