Letters to the Editor: May 23-29

Nothing Random About the Patriarchy

I read Traci Hukill's piece regarding the murder of Shannon Collins (“Random Acts,” Currents, May 16), and I strongly disagree with the people who regard this crime as "random." Shannon Collins was murdered because she was a woman, and the motive for this crime is misogyny. Bullies are not random in their selection of targets, since I have yet to hear of some large, muscular male being attacked at random without a motive by another male. Men who do get attacked at random tend to be men who appear physically and emotionally vulnerable and even "crazy" males know not to attack men bigger and stronger than themselves most of the time. Now is the time for men of conscience to stand in solidarity with women and condemn this action as an expression of the women-hating patriarchal values that still infect the world in varying degrees, from Afghanistan all the way to liberal Santa Cruz. You don't have to be a perfect model of "political correctness" to do this, just open your heart to compassion for human suffering. I also would like to thank Santa Cruz Weekly for publishing Jen Sorensen's "Slowpoke" comic mocking the patriarchal bully Mitt Romney. Our whole society is rooted in institutionalized violence, both through militarism and the economic system that profits from it, and we don't need some self-styled "Latter-Day Saint" to perpetuate this outmoded way of being.

Erich J. Holden

Santa Cruz

Nothing Accidental About History

My goodness, judging by the recent vitriolic ad hominem responses to the Thrive movie it seems to have really tweaked some local Progressives: take Aaron Cress (“Affront to Dignity,” Posts, May 16), for instance. This latest totally ad hominem rant accuses Foster Gamble of alleging “clandestine Jewish world domination:” Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and Carnegie were Jewish? Who knew? Accusing anti-globalists of anti-Semitism is a common, and in this case completely unsupportable, tactic of globalist apologist or “deniers.”

The detractors of Thrive have focused not on the ideas put forth, but on the persons expressing them. Example: G. Edward Griffin wrote The Creature From Jekyll Island, which was one of the first books exposing the true nature of the Federal Reserve banking system and the shady manner in which it was instituted; but he was also a member of the John Birch Society, which is supposed to completely discount anything he has to say about anything. And “right-wingers” are accused of being “bigots?” (Sigh!)

As far as the establishmentarian accidental theory of history that Mr. Cress espouses: no less a person than that icon of Progressivism, FDR, is quoted as having said, "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

Edgar Darwin

Santa Cruz

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