No defense for the man or the word

I had hoped and been awaiting someone else to make a critical response to Art Betke’s apologia and justification of Trump’s shithole remarks (“Defining the word,” The Citizen, January 24) but as I have seen none can wait no longer.

What Trump said aloud (and there is no evidence at all that he muttered this under his breath as Betke surmised) was indeed “crude, insulting and offensive.” as Betke agreed.

Alas, Betke goes on to say that the crude, insulting and offensive remarks were “accurate,” and even elaborates an argument to demonstrate such “truth”– showing that he misses what was so offensive in the first place.

The meeting was not about comparative socioeconomic assessment of nations but about immigration. Trump called Haiti, El Salvador and unspecified countries in Africa “shitholes” as a justification for restraining immigration from such places.

So the idea seems to be that people unfortunate enough to have been born in and be citizens of countries that have high rates of crime, poverty etc., don’t deserve the privilege of moving to America. By implication, they deserve what they’ve got, and perhaps can even be held responsible for the “shithole” nature of their homelands.

Let’s forget the history of op- pression that made such countries poor and crime-ridden in the first place and especially, let’s ignore the role that America and other First World nations have long played in pauperizing such poor countries through economic exploitation and, as needed, military interventions whenever they verged on having democracies that worked for the poor rather than for foreign corporate profits.

Nope, the reasoning, if such it is to be called, is there are bad places and ipso facto, their denizens are unworthy and repugnant, nothing like tall healthy and very white Norwegians.

I mean, what or who, after all, do you expect to find in “shitholes?”

No one with any conscience and awareness of the international distribution of wealth and power needs an ill-read president’s assessment of the conditions in Haiti and El Salvador to feel for Haitians and Salvadoreans who want out, who want for their children what we North Americans take for granted.

Nor would they want to rely on worthiness assessments from anyone who, as part of denigrating Haiti, would offhandedly characterize neighbouring Dominican Republic as a “tropical paradise.” That might be what it would looks like from inside one of those well-gated ClubMedstyle resorts, but not as seen from the shabby barrios of Santo Domingo like Guachupita or by the more than one-third of the people of that paradise who live on $1.25 a day or less.

Norman Dale Prince George

Let voters test drive PR

An open letter to our co-Premiers John Horgan and Andrew Weaver:

To quote Albert Einstein “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Should B.C. move from the first past the post (FPTP) system of voting to Proportional Representation (PR), that is the question.

Eighty-seven out of 195 countries around the world use a form of PR at this time. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Just a thought, why don’t we hold the next provincial election as a FPTP, yet have us vote so that we could see how the results would have been under PR.

We would rank all the candidates using the PR format yet the candidate who receives the most votes (FPTP) would be the victor.

I for one would then have a much better understanding of the possible ramifications of using the PR system.

Why spend millions of dollars on a referendum without a test drive?

I like to think we have the technology to do this.

Just a thought.

Neil Van Caeseele

Prince George