Dangerous party?

Mr. Rich Belzer once again uses his once a month platform in The Bulletin to spew hateful rhetoric assailing Republicans and the Republican Party. This time he chatters on about the party becoming “actively dangerous” based on COVID vaccination rates and because of questions asked regarding the science. “The Republican attack on our leading scientists over the past two years is causing people to die,” he states. He continues that the GOP is “satisfied with causing people to get sick and die.” How hateful, cynical, and actually pitiful.

Has Mr. Belzer no sense of self-awareness? Are we to believe that he does not know that 20% of the migrants released into the U.S. have tested positive for COVID (NBC News)? Are we to believe that he does not realize that it is his party’s policy to transport COVID positive migrants throughout Texas and the U.S. often without the knowledge much less consent of the receiving states and localities (NY Post)? Are we to believe that the COVID infection rates would be any different for those migrants eluding border security, traveling inland on their own?

While this Democrat policy may not be the cause of the recent delta variant spike, one can’t argue that this is not a super-duper spreader event affecting the migrant community at the border and the communities where they are dropped off. Yet Belzer’s column conveniently ignores this. Why would that be? Well, the question answers itself. This Democrat policy is far more dangerous than anything the Republicans could ever come up with.

— Bill Rich, Bend

Bring a student

On Aug. 13 The Bulletin reported on the previous day’s contentious and chaotic school board meeting in Redmond. The article then noted similar audience behavior at recent school board Meetings in Culver, Jefferson, and Crook County. This was a replay of last week’s school board meeting in Bend.

In each case board meeting venues were expanded as large numbers of angry parents crowded in to protest mask wearing or teachings related to race and gender in school. Apparently, parents laughed at, taunted, and shouted down school board members and state officials attempting to provide factual information. These elected authorities tried to explain how they were working to keep students and staff safe from COVID-19. Or they tried to describe why schools needed more accurate ways of teaching America’s history of conduct toward people of color and nonheterosexuals. But clearly when officials are not being listened to by those who elected them, democracy has broken down. Ultimately the schoolchildren are the victims of such dysfunctional meetings. They deserve an explanation.

So, I propose that any parent attending a school board meeting be required to bring one of their children. Afterward the parent can explain why their own childish behavior was excusable and would not result in a time out or loss of some privilege as it would if the child had behaved similarly. Or alternatively the parent could explain why angry protests are acceptable but only if one is white and heterosexual.

— Don Kunz, Bend

How quickly we forget

While the right is piling on President Biden for the fiasco in Afghanistan, how quickly they forget Trump wanted to get out that country. Does anybody really believe the outcome with the Taliban would have been any different if Trump was in charge? Even the president of Afghanistan has now fled the country. Perhaps the Afghanis have become too dependent on somebody else fighting for them. We’ve done everything we could to train an army. It’s time to leave. It’s cost us over $2 trillion dollars of borrowed money. I can fully understand soldiers who fought there feeling betrayed, just as in Vietnam. I just believe as the Soviets found out, it’s a no-win situation in that country. It’s a tribal culture, always has been. We would be there forever, spending trillions more trying to make it in our image. Many men in the country actually agree with the Taliban’s fundamental Muslim beliefs in the first place and do not care for western invaders imposing their lifestyle on them. It’s time to go. We need to pay more attention to the myriad of problems in our own country. This 20-year war reminds me of an old quote.

“It has been said that the United States was deceived into entering and expanding the Vietnam War by its own overoptimistic propaganda. The record suggests, however that the policy makers stayed in Vietnam not so much because of overly optimistic hopes of winning….as because of overly pessimistic assessments of losing.” — Jonathan Schell, The Real War

— Rob Smith, La Pine

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