{"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":"

(Re: Brock\u2019s Banter, August 30)<\/em><\/p>\n

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 – living a few miles from Pearl Harbor and experiencing the debate closely, personally and professionally.
\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 – whether under the major bully in Washington or even the minor one at Queen\u2019s Park.
\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 – either because we are fooled into supporting them or, worse, because we are too afraid or apathetic to resist them.<\/p>\n

Howard A. Doughty
\nOak Ridges
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(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 – living a few miles from Pearl Harbor and experiencing the debate closely, personally and professionally. I was not an apologist for US militarism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5By","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 06:04:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_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}]}}