Masterson bothered by what he practices

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Matthew 7.3)

Mike Masterson’s opinion piece on hypocrisy from July 28 is rather, well, hypocritical. He seems adept at slinging supposedly pithy axioms at straw men, while never once considering the faults of his own blindness.

Many of the examples he uses to demonstrate hypocrisy are viewed in public discourse as left-leaning policies. These are not left, right or center issues. They are human issues that all Americans should be concerned about. They have been branded left-leaning by folks who only want to help the ruling elites in business and politics consolidate and hoard their wealth and power.

Masterson’s pot-shots at environmental advocacy are particularly disturbing, given the current climate crisis that, one way or another, will change our society for generations to come.

Masterson suggests that anyone who advocates for a position, such as fighting climate change, must be a saint. Why are environmentalists held to a higher standard than our president or any other Christian in the United States? The only place he seems to expect saintly perfection is from those advocating an issue that has been branded “leftist” by the country’s elite.

Given his commitment to radical, rightwing positions, perhaps he is blind to the hypocrisy of the party line he is advocating. That party line attempts to distract Americans from working toward real solutions by framing reasonable proposals as naïve or lefty extremism. Meanwhile, moral corruption and bankruptcy runs amok in congress, and especially in the White House.

Masterson should consider how his pithy maxims are little more than his own “self-serving pronouncements” before he sets up straw men so that he can remove motes from their eyes. He should cease with his ad hominem attacks and his own hypocrisy. Nothing is quite as distasteful as someone trying to remove a splinter from his brother’s eye just to distract everyone from the log in his own eye. MICHAEL J. BEILFUSS

Bella Vista