Editor, Times-Union:
I was caught off guard the other day when I received an anonymous note from someone in the mail. It was from a fellow parishioner from the church I attend. I’ll refer to this person as the mystery critic for lack of a name. Apparently, the mystery critic is displeased with the tone of my letters to the editor. The mystery critic finds my letters hateful. I’d first like to invite the mystery critic to join into the exchange of opinions and observations we share in the “Letters” section of the newspaper.
The note immediately struck me as the “old school” method of trying to silence someone’s voice. Before the spread of social media, it was common practice of those on the left to shame or belittle their ideological target. Now, the government simply strong arms different media platforms to disallow whatever they deem to be misinformation.
I’ve been writing to the “Letters” section since 2020 and have tried my best to alert people to the drift of our government towards Socialism. I’ve never written any letter out of hate or malice, in fact my motivations were, for the most part, out of fear. You see, I don’t develop my opinions from Fox News. I’ve read the writings of Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, Adolf Hitler and Mao. Their ideological cancer has laid waste to over 100 million lives in modern history. You only need to study the collapse of our southern neighbor Venezuela, an oil rich nation, brought to abject poverty right in front of our eyes over the past 20 years. Apathy is not a plan and I feel it is my Christian duty to call out evil when I see it.
My mystery critic also calls my letters offensive. Well, there is one irrefutable fact about newspaper articles ... you don’t have to read them.
Gerald Roach
Warsaw