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Manipulative shams

To the editor:

On Nov. 4, this paper ran an ad paid for by John Dewell of Scio that bore the headline, “End Game of the Democratic Party.”

The first decidedly racist bullet point of this privately funded hit piece read, “When you vote Democrat, you are voting for open borders and the drowning of America in a brown, third world tidal wave.” Prior to that, in mid-October, Belmont County Republican Party committee member Don Krahel personally funded the printing and mailing of 15,000 postcards to registered Democrats. The mailer, which was headlined “The Democrat Active Anti-God Agenda,” warned of more than half a dozen supposed items on the Democrats’ docket that will consign anyone voting for a non-Republican to eternal damnation.

Now, as a Democrat who hears this kind of racist and bigoted doom harbingered every election cycle, you’d probably think it angers me; but I’m not angry with these deluded individuals. On the contrary, I feel nothing but pity for them. I’m sorry that they have been so disgustingly manipulated by the Republican Party and the party’s mouthpieces in the fringe-right media that they would dig into their personal retirement savings to spread Republican lies.

This kind of bogeyman-inventing is nothing new for the Klan’s favorite party. They have been doing it for years now; and they have specifically taken to ramping up new bugaboos in advance of general elections. If it’s October of an even-numbered year, there’s going to be a panic induced by the GOP.

In 2016, it was Syrian refugees. In 2014, the threat was African immigrants were causing an Ebola epidemic. In 2012 it was the war on coal. In 2010 it was death panels. Of course, there are a few perennial betes noire they trot out every election: Democrats will confiscate your guns, force you to gay marry your brother, tax the very air you breathe and euthanize all the white folk through race-mixing (yes, that last one is a thing some of them believe.)

The thing is, none of these things ever happen when Democrats win elections. So why do gullible old white people (mostly) keep falling for these obvious manipulative shams despite the ready availability of countervailing evidence?

The 2018 election is over, and as anticipated, all scare-mongering about the caravan has stopped. The same happened in 2016 when all hyperbolic hand-wringing about Syrian refugees halted after the election, and all fear of African Ebola faded by December 2014. But make no mistake — there is no question that there will be a brand new bogeyman in 2020. The only question is, will Republican voters be stupid enough to fall for it again?

J. David Core

Toronto

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