To the Editor:
Increasingly some of us are condemned for supporting the wrong issues. It is part of a strategy, and it is intentional. If you opine the way some posters dictate, you won’t be criticized, you will be obsequiously affirmed, but if you don’t you will be ostracized. The double standards don’t seem to trouble, because the main issues are not a debate but a battle. They want conformity not neutrality, not indifference or antipathy. If you don’t conform you are a bigot or a racist or a homophobe — you lack a moral compass. They will label you until you bend the knee, and when you don’t, you will still be attacked to impress others to join the attack.
They don’t want pluralism, they want obedience. In such a large nation we are going to disagree on a wide range of issues, and our country is great because we believe in a marketplace of free ideas, in pluralism, not intolerance. Diversity of thinking used to be celebrated, not bemoaned. Everything is changing. We don’t disagree, we destroy, we don’t converse, we cancel, and we expel people who are not like-minded.
This occurs with increasing frequency on The MV Times, and I am also an offender. The editor some time ago said ‘’no more,’’ but the censorship is weak — too much gets through the cracks, and certain subjects are still verboten. We don’t engage and all of this is incompatible with good journalism. If you tell a small percentage of us that our views don’t belong, don’t be surprised if the persuasion is reciprocated, and it often is. It is time the editor allowed only opinions and no attacks — allowed free expression and left ad hominem out of the equation.
Andrew Engelman
Stuart, Fla.
