Second or Third Thoughts

The Point Roberts monthly newspaper features a very lively ‘Letters to the Editor’ section. It is here that one first turns to find out the real news of the Point over the past month. Although there are a number of frequent-flyer letter writers, two of them rise to a class of their own...sort of Platinum+. Both are men and both can frequently be encountered at local meetings of note. I last saw John LeSow at a Voters’ Association meeting where he came to obsess about water quality, although that was not actually on the meeting’s agenda. Water quality is monitored here by Vancouver, B.C., which supplies the water (i.e., we are getting the same water that they get up in Vancouver) and by the state of Washington, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and John LeSow, all of which have their own, if not always the same, standards.

The other of these epistolary compulsives is Ron Calder, and I use both their names only because they put themselves forward in a public way so often that I don’t take it they are much concerned about privacy as far as politics goes, anyway. Both John and Ron are of a libertarian bent and perhaps of the Libertarian Party itself. There were a suspiciously large number of RON PAUL signs nailed to all the power poles right before the recent primary and presidential caucus and an absolute absence of signs for anyone else.

Point Roberts is largely a Democratic Party stronghold, but the Republicans here in the 2000 primary voted for Allan Keyes, and the great majority of the admittedly small number of Republican caucus votes this year—15, as I recall--went for Ron Paul. If asked, I would certainly have no hesitation in concluding that the boys both voted for George Bush in the 2000 presidential general election. As to 2004...well, hard to know. Certainly by 2004, a lot of Libertarians had begun to be very restless, although it’s hard to imagine they might take their restlessness over to la table of that Frenchy John Kerry.

But now we know about Ron Calder, anyway. The March paper features an eloquent letter from Mr. Calder in which he refers to 'bottom-of-the-barrel' Michael Chertoff as 'Head of Hopeless Insecurity,' notes the parallels to Nazism in a country run by “Grand Fuhrer George’,’ and uses such phrases as ‘out of control,’ ‘scary,’ and ‘one more year of lunacy.’ Ron is pretty upset about how things are going. He wants the Patriot Act repealed, he wants his rights back, he remembers the days ‘when America was truly the land of the Free.’ Back in the days of Bill Clinton????

Well, it goes right to my heart to see someone like Ron as pissed off with this administration as I am. Yes, Ron! Yes, Brother! We are all in this together. But then he notes that he voted for George Bush not only in 2000, but also in 2004, acknowledging that he made ‘the same mistake twice.’ You surely did, Ron. The first vote we can understand; lots of people were surprised at what the U.S. got with Bush regardless of whether they did or did not vote for him, although I was not one of those surprised (she said proudly). But the second vote???

We hold this to be self-evident: that anyone who voted for George Bush twice has given us indisputable evidence that he or she doesn’t have the discernment or judgment or just mother wit of anyone that we would really be interested in listening to. Somehow, I think that Mr. Calder will keep talking anyway, whether we are listening or not.