Editor,
The recent missive of Roy Schimelpfenig (Feb. 21, The Reflector) was a mishmash of misleading, misinformed, misbeliefs and mistaken statements (I have run out of M’s). I will counter his defense of the former president with only a few comments and some quotes that the former president said or texted.
LIES: Because the former president has lied so much, it is difficult to believe he ever tells the truth. There are many lies that most of us have lost count and require the media to help us remember. In a speech he gave in Florida, he said, “If you say it enough, and keep saying it, they’ll start to believe you.” For your information, this is the basic tenet of all propaganda.
SOCIALISM: The U.S. is primarily based on capitalism and private enterprise, but we do have some socialist programs, like fire and police services, that provide a public safety service to all of us. Most of these “socialist” services have bipartisan support and are run by cities, counties, states and not the federal government.
While in office, and to combat the pandemic, the former president himself provided a socialist public service program called “Operation Warp Speed.” The government paid for private companies to create COVID-19 vaccines and distributed them for free to all who wanted them. This is a good description of socialism. The former president gave himself credit for the coronavirus vaccine rollout, calling it “one of the greatest miracles of the ages.” It seems he not only likes socialism but the benefits of vaccines, too!
VOTING: I agree with Roy’s encouragement to vote, but he may have forgotten that Washington is a vote-by-mail state, which the former president intensely dislikes. In 2022, he texted, “You can never have fair & free elections with mail-in ballots — never, never, never.” For your information, our state has been doing mail-in-voting for many years without significant problems.
For those of you who don’t like mail-in-voting, I will leave you with a humorous quote from a U.S. congressman who said, “When you are driving in your car to vote (at your home precinct’s polling place) remember to select D to go forward, and only select R to go backward.”
Darrel Anderson
Battle Ground
