Dear Editor:
If you hate Justin Trudeau, you’ve been tricked. If you hate Erin O’Toole, you’ve been tricked. The Liberals aren’t your enemy, nor are the Conservatives, or the NDP or the Greens, they are all just politicians compromising away hoping to get elected.
You might not like their policies, but they aren’t worthy of hate, just disagreement. If you suddenly find yourself filled with hate for vaccinations after spending your whole life not caring at all about vaccinations, you’ve been tricked.
The problems we have aren’t caused by mainstream politicians or healthcare workers or scientists, they are caused by fanatics and extremists on all sides, and more importantly the people who exploit them. Fanatics and extremists hate the “other side” with a passion that obscures all thought, and that makes them dangerous to the rest of us.
Every side has its fanatics and extremists; some sides have more fanatics and extremists than other sides do, but they all have them. Behind the scenes, though, are cynical, greedy people who realize that they can provoke existing fanatics and extremists and make money from them, and also enrage normal people and turn them into fanatics and extremists and make even more money.
If person A tries to make you hate person B, you should worry about person A; person B is almost certainly harmless.
David Brandow,
Guelph