{"id":21548,"date":"2018-09-06T15:24:03","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T19:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21548"},"modified":"2018-09-06T15:24:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T19:24:03","slug":"on-losing-civility-in-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/on-losing-civility-in-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"On losing civility in politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>(Re: Brock\u2019s Banter, August 30)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Although I am not an American (never was, never will be), I studied and worked in the USA during the harshest parts of the Vietnam debacle &#8211; living a few miles from Pearl Harbor and experiencing the debate closely, personally and professionally.<br \/>\nI was not an apologist for US militarism then or now and was, therefore, not on McCain\u2019s \u201cside.\u201d But I do understand the difference between principles and personal disagreements. I also appreciate why you feel badly about our current political prospects &#8211; whether under the major bully in Washington or even the minor one at Queen\u2019s Park.<br \/>\nAll I can say is that, if the door closes on civility, the blame will not be on those closed-minded authoritarians who exercise power with perfect blends of arrogance and ignorance, but in the larger community which allows them to take control &#8211; either because we are fooled into supporting them or, worse, because we are too afraid or apathetic to resist them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Howard A. Doughty<br \/>\nOak Ridges<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Re: Brock\u2019s Banter, August 30) Although I am not an American (never was, never will be), I studied and worked in the USA during the harshest parts of the Vietnam debacle &#8211; living a few miles from Pearl Harbor and experiencing the debate closely, personally and professionally. I was not an apologist for US militarism [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-opinion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}