12 minute read
OPINION
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OUR READERS’ VIEWPOINTS
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Biden’s Tulsa speech
Editor:
Biden’s speech in Tulsa on the 100th anniversary of the 1921 massacre of 300 Blacks made me wonder why schools never taught a thing about this massacre. This was the first I have heard about it. Now, 100 years later, it is brought to our attention that over 1,000 homes of Black Americans were burned down, and now, a century later, after a century of silence about this massacre, people are demanding reparations to the surviving relatives who were not yet born when this atrocity happened.
Why weren’t reparations made 100 years ago? The Black community sure could have used the money back then to rebuild their lives that were torn apart. The great-great grandchildren who may receive reparation 100 years later didn’t suffer a day. What’s wrong with our leadership? They let those who suffer to suffer more for a hundred years and give reparation to people in families four generations later who never even read about the massacre in schoolbooks, just like it wasn’t mentioned in my schoolbooks.
This is exactly why reparations to relatives of slaves who never were slaves won’t work. Did the Egyptians pay reparations to the Jewish slaves when Pharo set them free? Did Brazil do the same when they freed their slaves? Slavery is a part of history that never should have taken place in civilized society, and it’s a shame that humans found a “need” for such inhumane acts. To “gift” those who were not humiliated or suffered those terrible acts won’t make a single dead slave any happier, because they are the ones who should receive any reparation checks, and that’s impossible.
Why give a descendant a check 100 years later to buy a new Cadillac, Mercedes or mansion when that descendant didn’t suffer even a mosquito bite? Democrats use the word “reparation” as a tool to get new Democrats, and they never pay up. This has gone on for centuries.
James Logan Buckeye
The weather
Editor:
Well, if you thought last summer was hot, get ready for mega heat this summer.
It is not all about global warming. Because of the lower levels in our lakes, it has been decided to put water restrictions in effect. It’s all well and good except it is not going to affect homeowners only, but farmers.
About 25% of their water allotment is being cut, so that means 25% fewer fields being planted.
That means 25% less food produced and a 25% decrease in the money farmers will make, and that may be the difference in staying in business or having to sell off the land.
Selling the land has resulted in the mass production of houses and warehouses. And have you noticed how the temps are going up? Well, irrigation, which cools the air and grows the food you eat, evaporates. No irrigation, no evaporation. So, hotter weather. Add to that all the concrete buildings generating even more heat. Maybe we should all cut back on the water usage and keep the farmers growing.
Lynda Fiorini Avondale
Full disclosure
Editor:
I think your readers, many of them newcomers to Arizona and the West Valley, would benefit if you would
MARGULIES’ OPINION — jimmymargulies.com
identify your new columnist, J.D. Hayworth. It’s always helpful in making judgments to know the background of columnists. Should you decline, I suggest readers do their own research via any search engine online. I also think Mr. Hayworth should address the question of whether he is planning or thinking about seeking any elected office in the future.
Editor:
I totally agree with the columnist David Leibowitz in his article dated June 16, 2021, titled “Landlords are the forgotten pandemic heroes.”
I’ve been a landlord previously, for several years. In my college-level training classes on the subject of purchasing, the thought which was most drilled to me was “if you don’t keep your suppliers healthy, they won’t be there for you.” This is so true in this case. If the tenant doesn’t pay the rent, the potential landlords won’t choose to invest in homes for them to rent. The present landlords will sell their investments properties. It will come back to bite them. Landlords won’t be financially healthy.
Barbara Goodpaster Goodyear
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13 Feel like a victim? Don’t invite me to lunch
BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ
West Valley View Columnist
The argument began, as so many do, over words. A friend, male, late-40s, Jewish, was detailing an anti-Semitic insult he’d suffered at the hands of a client. Then he wanted it to be my turn.
“You must be the victim of discrimination like that all the time,” he asserted.
My response? “I’ve never been the victim of anything in my life. Have I experienced anti-Semitic language or insults? Sure. A lot. But victimized? I don’t think so.”
Our conversation descended into semantics and harshness over what constitutes victimhood. My friend argued that we’re all — all 7.6 billion Earthlings — victims of slights and people we may never admit or never know harmed us. I argued that his definition of victimization trivializes real injury.
“If everyone’s a victim, then no one’s a victim” was my final salvo. The server mercifully delivered the check. “I’ve been to murder scenes. I’ve interviewed survivors of concentration camps and rape. I just don’t see a parallel between how they’ve been hurt and some idiot calling you a hebe.”
It’s true that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Mine probably cost me a friend.
I thought about this exchange for days, about why being called a victim so lodged in my craw.
I guess it’s because in America today, the prevalent narrative — one I reject with great force — is that we are a nation of victims and victimizers, the afflicted and the afflicting, and I try every day to live my life as neither one.
To consume news in 2021 is like reading an endless scroll of society’s victims.
Violence, racism, income inequality, police brutality, bullying, ageism, sexual harassment, gender inequality, COVID-19, LGBTQ discrimination, kink shaming, sizeism and countless more stigmas and prejudices.
If I sound intolerant, cold or sarcastic — or like I’m “mansplaining” in a discriminatory huff — that’s not my intention.
But, lately I find myself experiencing an “empathy deficit,” the sense that my well of compassion might be running lower than Lake Mead on a blazing June afternoon.
A confession: I do everything I can to empathize with victims in proportion to the injury done to them and the theft committed against them.
I grieve the murdered dead. I want justice and greater compassion for all who suffer sexual assault or hate crimes. I loathe Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein for their criminal acts. I want police officers to seek out wrongdoers without seeing skin color.
I donate to charity. And yes, I “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” and that we, one and all, possess “certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
I was raised to honor the Golden Rule. Or, as Jesus put it in Matthew 7, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”
That’s an old-fashioned way of thinking, of course. Today, it’s insufficient to treat others as you hope to be treated. Instead, we’re asked to treat everyone exactly as they would like to be treated or risk being branded a victimizer.
Alternately, we are expected to empathize with anyone who has not been treated up to their own exacting standards. Don’t believe me? Check the scathing Yelp reviews authored by anyone who has ever been served a not-quite-medium-rare burger.
There are victims in the world, and I do feel for them. But there are also people who seem to define themselves chiefly by the injuries they have suffered, every sickening insult, every deprivation, every last inequality.
That is their prerogative, I suppose. But they probably shouldn’t invite the rest of us to lunch anytime soon.
David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Contact david@leibowitzsolo.com
WEST VALLEY VIEW NEWS | JUNE 23, 2021
Through a dark glass, confusedly
BY J.D. HAYWORTH
West Valley View Columnist
Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin spent a mid-June day in Geneva, talking to each other at a summit conference.
NBC News headlined its preview of the event: “Biden begins long, tense meeting with Putin.”
Don’t believe it.
NBC and the other alphabet networks, plus their cable cousins, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, no longer disseminate news — they construct narratives.
In a world where the true news cycle would change by the nanosecond, the old-line press organs in the United States have remained remarkably consistent, especially over the last decade. Collectively, they spout varied narratives under this broad theme: Conservative principles are wrong and dangerous, while leftist goals are somehow “forward thinking” and to be embraced.
You may be tempted to file that general theme under the heading “Wrong is Right,” and you would be correct.
But when it comes to the pre-summit headline from NBC, further analysis is in order. The National Broadcasting Company is better defined these days by the words “Never Believe Conservatives.” Accordingly, the pro-Biden press partisans wanted to project an image of the 46th president as the “tough guy in the aviator shades.”
If only.
Sadly, we saw a very different image of Joe Biden during the G-7 meetings, just prior to the Russian summit. The swagger was replaced with a shuffle. Confidence gave way to confusion. Statements of certainty became mumbled, incoherent mutterings. The
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“Leader of the Free World” had to be led by his wife.
Joe Biden has cognitive problems, and the press has a real problem with credibility.
Our international adversaries suffer no such delusions. Neither should we.
Russian “President” (in reality, Neo-Soviet Dictator) Putin resembles the cat who ate the canary. He remembers the days of the old USSR, when he was a young KGB agent, and “old” was the operative term in Moscow. The Soviet Politburo was a gerontocracy. When President Reagan was asked why he had not held a summit with the USSR during his first term, he responded, “My problem for the first few years was they kept dying on me.” Brezhnev. Andropov. Chernenko.
Now, in the United States, there’s an aging Democrat Troika on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Pelosi. Schumer. Biden. Of the three, the Senate majority leader is the “spring chicken” at age 70; the House speaker is the most senior at 81; and the president is 78.
What’s Russian for “now the shoe’s on the other foot”?
Over a year ago, when he was a little more spry, candidate Biden challenged a Marine veteran who criticized his son’s unsavory associations to a pushup contest.
During the one-day U.S.-Russia summit, President Biden meekly pushed a list across the table to Putin — a list of 16 critical infrastructure targets “off limits” to Russian cybercriminals. So, can the internet thieves begin with No. 17 on the target list, or should Vlad have thanked Joe for helping Russia’s cyber warfare experts by doing their work for them — or both?
Instead, Putin took the typical Russian approach: He simply denied any cyber connection.
Back home, there’s no denying the curious paradox of President Biden: Our chief executive, so confused during his trip abroad, leads an administration that is singularly focused on what it perceives as the top domestic threat.
Attorney General Merrick Garland spelled it out during the “off day” between the G-7 meeting in England and the summit in Geneva.
“In the FBI’s view, the top domestic extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists — specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”
Got that?
Never mind the more than 8,500 extremists of BLM and Antifa arrested during the riots last summer. They did billions of dollars in damage, but many made bail, courtesy of the Hollywood left and Democrat politicians, including Kamala Harris.
So, rioters from the left are mere protesters.
Protesters from the right are rioters, insurrectionists and, likely, white supremacists.
Quite the narrative. Dark days ahead.
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