Dear Madam:
In 1965, MGM released the movie “Doctor Zhivago,” based on a Boris Pasternak novel by the same name. The movie was quite the hit back in those ancient days. It’s a love story set against the Russian revolution about Zhivago, a romantic poet as well as a doctor, played by Omar Sharif, and his paramour, Lara, played by Julie Christy.
Pasha, one of the characters in the movie, was an ardent revolutionary who wore wire rim glasses and had a cool scar from a Cossack saber cut running down his cheek. He was admired and emulated by the counterculture hippies and young boomers of the sixties—at least until Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia in 1967. At that point Guevara’s image, wearing a beret with a red star on the front, was plastered on the front of thousands of tee shirts. The boomers and counterculture heroes proudly wore these shirts to all the Viet Nam anti-war demonstrations of the day and then handed them down to their grandchildren. You can still see these tee shirts at the “mostly peaceful” anti-Ice riots and the “No Kings” demonstrations. Like Joe Hill, Che never died, apparently.
Che Guevara was a major player in Castro’s revolution in Cuba, a revolution that ground the Cubans into subjugation and impoverished them all. When Guevara got too popular with the naïve Cubans, Castro “encouraged” Guevara to decamp to South America and foment revolution down there. Castro was pretty handy with his firing squads, so Guevara took the hint. His activities in South America eventually ended when he was captured by the Bolivians, stood up before a firing squad as he and Castro had done to so many Cuban dissidents, and was executed. That was when his fame as a counterculture hero really took off, and there it is to this day.
All these socialists turn on each other, eventually, because their political philosophy, despite all the lofty sentiments about equality and worker’s rights, are really about the total subjugation of the citizens by the power elite. Then the power elite betray and murder each other until the “Strong Man” wins out and you are left with a dictator. Since the Russian revolution in 1916, this same scenario has played out all over the world.
One can excuse young people, maybe, for their attraction to socialism. They are full of romanticism and lacking in reason, besides being hampered by brains that aren’t fully developed until after age twenty-five. The principles of socialism sound wonderful to young people, but with all the world’s history contained in our iPhones, older folks should know better. They have all they need to educate themselves on where socialism will lead them, but with the destruction of our American system of individualism and limited government by the media and our educational system, maybe they don’t care.
Ernest Hemingway, in his novel “The Sun Also Rises,” has a character explaining how he went bankrupt with the phrase “gradually, then all at once.”
I hope that will not be us explaining to some future generation about how we lost the greatest country in history. As Joni Mitchell says, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
Now, after getting all this off my chest, I hope the 1965 Julie Christy will haunt my dreams –instead of Abigail Spanberger.
John Jackson
Huntersville
Dear Editor,
As Theodore Roosevelt said back in 1908, “conservation is a national duty”. In addition to the 89,050-acre Forest Service Deer Creek Integrated Resource Project centering around Green Bank, which was unfortunately approved (think logging and preparing for more logging..) and which will apply four different herbicides (Glyphosate, Sulfometuron Methyl, Imazapyr, and Triclopyr) on our beautiful forests and birthplace of rivers (to prepare for, you guessed it, more logging), the Forest Service is also “exploring the potential for outplanting of blight resistant American Chestnut” (think GMO trees!).
I strongly oppose the release of genetically engineered trees into wild forests and feel like residents should have a say in such a matter. Releasing genetically engineered trees into the wild would introduce irreversible risks. Trees live for generations and spread pollen over long distances, meaning engineered traits could permanently alter native forest ecosystems in ways that cannot be undone.
Long-term impacts remain unknown, yet the consequences could last for centuries. There is no need to take these risks. Non-genetically engineered approaches – including traditional breeding and natural regeneration – are already showing promise in restoring American chestnut populations without introducing novel genetic changes into the wild. Forests are complex, living systems that require precaution and respect. Once genetically engineered trees are released, they cannot be recalled. For these reasons, I reject the release of genetically engineered trees into wild forests and support restoration approaches that protect ecological integrity. Please join me in voicing your opposition by calling the Marlinton Ranger District of the Forest Service 304-799-4334, as well as your representatives in government. It’s up to all of us to speak up to preserve our forests!
Heartbroken and hoping others will speak up,
Miriam Weber
Green Bank
