Communism is not the trouble, despotism is, and medical analysis is above a military paygrade
To the Expositor:
A troubling short note to the opinion page in the Island weekly newspaper, The Manitoulin Expositor, March 23 (‘Retired veteran calls for nation to stand strong’) from a former military person that the pandemic was a “man-developed bug” and that the war in Europe is the reignited Cold War, a conflict with “communism.”
Okay. After several Anglo-Saxon invectives and assorted WTFs, as a former military person myself, does that infer a responsibility to the village commons? Am I duty bound to respond?
Spreading questionable and unfounded facts does not serve the common good. And my veteran’s pension tells me I am serving the commons. Not my opinions. The commons.
Not really sure how qualified a military opinion, regardless of rank, would be on medical issues or for that matter the shape and mood of international politics.
Communism, however, I understand from the 1960s era as a former spec ops training sergeant in counter-insurgency warfare. And maybe too much time in the jungles.
And I know from that frontline’s perspective that our troubles now are not with communism any more than it was in the 1960s.
More accurately, our struggle then and even more so now, is with despotism—absolutism—my way or the highway politics.
And that is not just in the Ukraine but across a broad spectrum in the entire global corporate-run, top down management of human affairs.
The current agonies in the Ukraine are the focus and the tipping point.
The other matter, “bugs,” pandemics. That is of medical concern.
Above my paygrade and qualifications and I think we can safely assume also those of the author of the remarks.
To be of maximum benefit to the unsettled commons which the uniform serves, I must defer to qualified medical opinion.
And that is in readily accessible open platform discussions. It’s an apolitical science. The science from those qualified and speaking from human empathy tells me this is a “zoonotic” origin. Laboratories may be sampling and working with those samples but the critter is not man made. The response to these cyclic pandemics is the man made part.
Ron Bunston
Sheguiandah
