June 12, 2022
Sunday

The KGB Mayor of course, is Rodney Dial, our not so erstwhile Mayor who earned that handle by seeking to claim in order to get elected college credibility and experience on the basis of a few courses at the community college. “College Boy” is a grade schooler, and while that is not disqualifying respective the position he currently holds (Most of our city and borough mayors have been grade schoolers, and none were in any sense exceptional.), it was an intentional attempt to elevate himself by disparaging advanced education and those who have attained it. This is a popular point of view in this country these days; the simple fact that one does not have a college education, is not capable of attaining such, is sufficient in itself to degrade those who are educated.

There is nothing more disgusting, not even the soldier bit, than an individual who claims educational experience and qualification he or she does not have. Sometimes you go to prison for it. Mayor Rodney Dial in fact is very one-dimensional, and he will never be a college man. He does not have the guts or the capacity to be a college man.

A university education is a very hard thing to complete. First it requires incredible will and discipline way beyond the norm. While there are those independent-minded and determined enough to do it all on their own, it also often takes the help of others, and that frequently over a generation or more of time and intense effort. I think here of the parents who scrimp and save over 20 years, forego vacations and things, in order to put their kids through school; the parents who owe $275,000 in student loans for putting two young people through college; and all of the young and not so young professionals in this town who owe $100,000 to $200,000 in student loans for completing their educations.

Nine hours of graduate-level work at a real university requires nine hours a week in class and seven to nine hours a week out of class for every hour spent in class; that is 70 to 90 hours a week every week of the term. Once the prescribed course work has been completed no degree is conferred until you demonstrate via comprehensive testing and thesis retention and at least theoretical application of all the course material that was presented. Next in virtually all fields are a series of competency tests that have to be passed before you are even presented the opportunity to begin applying what you have learned. Then internships. Would you prefer it otherwise for an engineer or a doctor?

All of this oue myor degrades; Rodney is special.

Next is Rodney’s military dude-ism. Oh? You did a hitch in the Army, good for you. And now you are running around in an armored car spewing anti-abortion slogans. I find this particularly off-putting. My father was a radio operator in a B17. Twice he came home on two engines; on two other occasions was standing by waiting for the order to bail out which fortunately did not come. Colonel Smith, his last commander, was a buddy who came up here every year in the 70s through the early 90s to go fishing. He flew 43 missions in a B17, most over Germany and most as lead pilot. The most that were flown was Rosenthal’s Rosie’s Riveters who did 55 before pan caking into a farmer’s field and thereafter being consigned stateside for permanent USO tour duties. Col. Smith was in the top ten or so of all B17 pilots.

Tim Morgan’s dad made four of the five major combat jumps conducted by the US Army in the European Theater. Gene Collopy shot down eight Migs in Korea (3 confirmed, 5 probable; he would tell you he shot down three). Hank Prentiss was climbing down a gangway in the early days of WWII when a German torpedo split his ship in half conveniently right in front of him, and he stepped off into the ocean and spent more than two weeks in a lifeboat before being rescued. On June 6, 1944, he spent his day at a place called Omaha Beach fishing GIs out of the water. Blackie Kossman did Okinawa. Dave Nelson Sr. had three aircraft carriers shot out from underneath him. “Wild Bill” Hamilton did more than a year in Korea, during which time he experienced 30 minutes of intense combat.

George Lybrand was a crewman on the USS Franklin when it took a bomb off the coast of Japan; 765 men died, most of them immolated in the first few minutes, the burials at sea of the melted bulkheads and beams encasing the bone shards of the dead concluding only shortly before her passing the Statue of Liberty on her way to the scrap yard.

Still among you are some of those who did the ‘Nam, and in passing all that really needs to be said is that at peak strength of 575,000 only 70,000 or so grunts comprised the tip of the spear, and the casualty rates in those units throughout the war were 75% to 95%. WWII was an artillery war where 88% of all casualties were inflicted by heavy weapons. Vietnam was a small arms conflict where most combats were fought at ranges of 15 feet to 50 yards (meters in military parlance, of course). The little people learned early on to stay close to US field formations, thus limiting considerably the effectiveness of US heavy weapons.

And they did not get a parade when they came home either.

Mayor Dial belittles by tooting his own horn so loudly for personal gain only. Most of these guys never even told their own families what they did. In several instances I told them about their fathers. About half these guys were members of your city council or borough assembly, and they never publicly made a big deal about what they did.

Finally, there is Rodney’s support and literal sponsorship of hate groups hiding behind religious labels. I am still waiting for someone to show me these passages where Jesus says that gays are bad, and he lived in a time where even the Roman Army was based on a homosexual ‘buddy’ system. Called the Perusia in earlier times and going by many other names since including the Second Coming, the Resurrection, and more recently “the Rapture,” this is the oldest con known to Christianity commencing mere hours after his purported earthly departure, and just as 500 years ago and 2000 years ago “in the year 2525 if man is still alive” some bunch of vainly arrogant fools is once again going to be sold the bill of goods that Jesus has waited for your specific time to reappear because you are oh so special. And anything you think or believe is oh so special. And only you who pay the right carny cons calling themselves preacher men will be among the rapturized, and you can steal, hate, and otherwise do as you please toward all your other neighbors because they are mere soulless husks who are not of the chosen.

So when two of these carny cons bring their flocks to a borough assembly meeting and spend more than two hours bewailing the unfairness of an anti-discrimination ordinance because they think queers are bad, evil even, Rodney in his one-dimensional way promptly declares the ordinance unconstitutional (He is, of course, a highly-regarded constitutional law scholar.), a declaration promptly overruled by a wittier group of Assembly members.

Along the way Rodney has a visit with a trans individual in the audience, and to this individual despite all this nonsense just minutes before Rodney asks is he not always polite to this trans individual, as if in his one-dimensional thinking that is all that really matters? It does not begin to be what matters. These individuals have every right to expect equality before the law, equality in the eyes of God, and equality in the eyes of their fellow man; and even more so equalness as human beings.

Not even Rodney’s religious perceptions permit that. Queers are evil in the eyes of God, and he wants to proscribe that in law, too.

Also to be proscribed by law by the most vigorous means possible is your love-making. Mayor Dial is there for you “from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death,” and he even has that armored car turret to stick through your bedroom window to make sure you are not committing murder by taking a morning-after pill, and if you do, he is there to vigilante you into prison so he can collect his $10,000 bounty from Gregg Abbott and the state of Texas. Hosanna of Hosannas!!!

I don’t get this hang-up over gay people, and even less do I get this collective hang-up over sex and reproduction. Along the way, for example, I have been shocked to discover that these evangelicals actually do engage occasionally in recreational sex. Shock of shocks; you’d think they would all be a bunch of prudes save for three or four occasions in their lifetimes. But no, they are horny toads, too, and as we have witnessed on numerous occasions when inconvenienced they opt for abortion, too.

It seems to me what works against gay people mostly is it is very difficult (but not impossible) to hide it. Last I looked about three percent of the population is gay; maybe with all these LBGTQ categories that percentage is a bit higher, I don’t know. Last I looked about two percent of the population is into golden showers; a certain percentage of the population is into heterosexual sodomy; only in the last day or two did I learn that heterosexual males (purportedly) getting together to group masturbate is a thing. Last I heard of anything like that was in the age of Antoninus and Commodus where the high priests and acolytes of certain Mithraic cults got together every morning to masturbate on the sacred stone, so the sun would come up. I figured that nonsense all died out when someone forgot to set the alarm clock, they all overslept, and the sun came up anyway. Oh oops.

Ketchikan has been no stranger to swingers’ clubs, group gropes, and even a church whose members one day confessed to everyone sleeping with each other, and what was true in your grandparents’ time is likely as true today, or you all really are that boring. Only the gays have a hard time hiding this nonsense, so you pick on them, ignoring entirely your own sexual kinks and hi-jinks.

Mayor Dial is capable of representing only a very narrow and reactionary segment of this community; he is an extremist autocrat who actually believes he and the State have a right to be in your bedroom while you are getting it on. He is also a firm believer in discrimination; just form yourself a hate group, call it a church, then figure out who you are going to point fingers at, who your religion says to hate.

Find a replacement mayor, someone more moderate, and someone much less self-absorbed. Rodney is in this for Rodney, a disconnect rather common in local government lately; as the infrastructure for which they are responsible crumbles; as carpetbaggers threaten major financial disruption, i.e. lower sales tax revenues, pay raises are the primary concern of both the bureaucrats and the elected officials.

Find a replacement for Mayor Dial, someone who wants to move the community forward rather than just himself.

David G. Hanger
Ketchikan, Alaska

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Small edits in wording in this letter have been made by the SitNews Editor. The edits have not changed the context.

Opinions expressed are solely those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Sitnews.

Received June , 2022 - Published June ,122022

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