Where has political decency gone?
By Letter to the Editor on March 28, 2019.
What a sad spectre politics have become both in Canada and the U.S. I used to be optimistic about the intent and purpose behind those seeking public office. Lately though, that has waned, and more and more cynicism is setting in. Can I be blamed? We have a U.S. president who lies so regularly that the fact checkers are burning out and whose clear self-interest over that of the national interest is sickening. In his world a war hero and icon of the U.S. Senate becomes fodder for criticism, for merely standing up to the despotic president’s lies, chaos and corruption. Here at home we have a self-proclaimed feminist PM who likes to yell at his female MPs and debase them. Instead of accepting the judgment of non-partisan legal officials, he instead illegally and improperly meddles in the affair, as it may affect his electability in Quebec. He then sends out the Liberal Big Red PR machine to try to smooth things over after punishing the one person in the whole mess who showed integrity. Even closer to home, we have a UCP leader who will stop at no moral boundary in an effort to win whatever race he enters. He will cheat, lie and then obfuscate in an attempt to protect his already staggering electoral advantage, because winning at all costs is all that matters. So we have a liberal, a conservative and a Trump (he has no real political ideology, just his own self interest) who all share common characteristics of dishonesty and disingenuous attempts to portray themselves as something more than they are. And why? The answer is simple. They have succumbed to the lust for power and long forgotten the noble pursuit of public service. The lack of integrity is almost as staggering as it is sad. In the rapidly approaching provincial and federal elections ask yourselves, are the candidates like Joe Clark, Abraham Lincoln, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Peter Lougheed, or are they like Trudeau, Trump, Nixon and Kenney? Is there no room for decency, for doing the right thing and living up to the principles our countries were built on? If not, God have mercy on us. Jim Taylor Medicine Hat 9-8
