Letters: KC readers discuss Missouri Amendment 3, pandemic ‘hoax’ and Democrats’ plots
Keep clean
Missouri voters approved the Clean Missouri initiative by a 2-to-1 margin in 2018. Clean Missouri makes redistricting fair and transparent. Amendment 3 on this year’s ballot would negate the anti-gerrymandering provisions of the Clean Missouri plan.
Clean Missouri was written and approved by Missourians. Amendment 3 is deceptive and deceitful, written by and designed to protect incumbent politicians in rigged, super-safe districts where voters can’t hold them accountable.
Vote no on Amendment 3.
- Dennis Coday, Liberty
Some choice
Remember bridge expert Charles Goren? We should call it the Goren election: President Donald Trump versus no Trump. Americans can choose Trump or no Trump, aka Joe Biden. No one — even in the absence of Trump — ever said, “I want Joe Biden to be president.” Either way, and most depressingly, neither candidate gives us a winning hand.
- Richard F. Thomas Jr., Kansas City
Symptom of reality
Recently, a reporter from the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper asked a Missourian about President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis. He replied: “It’s a hoax. There’s no pandemic. … How many millions die of flu?”
In short order, he served up conspiracy, denial and gross misinformation. He then pivoted 180 degrees to, “If he’s sick, then they planted it when they tested him. It’s what they did to me when I went to hospital for my heart beating too fast. Two weeks later I got a cold. I don’t trust the U.S. government at all. Who are they to mandate personal safety?” Here, he adds sinister efforts by educated professionals and ends by dismissing a primary function of government: assuring our safety.
This man, and how many hundreds of thousands (millions?) like him, embraces a political view more suited to QAnon than provable reality. Trump exploits their paranoia, obsession and darkly magical thinking, but he didn’t create them. He has channeled their mindset, but they would find another conspiracy-monger to follow if he weren’t available.
Bringing them into America’s political mainstream should be a national priority — or we won’t have to worry about zombies, because a voter apocalypse will get us first.
- John McDonald, Ferguson, Missouri
Democrats’ plan
Forget party politics for the moment. A far more overreaching issue for Kansas voters is of the U.S. Senate election. We are a republic of 50 governmental bodies called states. The structures of Congress and the Electoral College were carefully designed by our founders to allow smaller-population states to have a voice in government — and in the Senate, an equal voice.
Now the politics. Money is pouring into the Democratic election coffers in states such as Kansas hoping to flip them. Who will those candidates support once in office? We all know elected representatives and senators start in on the next election as soon as they take office. They will be beholden to big outside money sources and not to the Kansans who elected them.
If the Democrats gain the Senate and presidency and keep the House, they more or less have promised to restructure our whole government to assure their complete control for the foreseeable future. Their plan: Eliminate the Senate filibuster, pack the Supreme Court with their majority and eliminate the Electoral College system. Smaller states from that point forward would have no voice whatsoever in determining their future.
- Roger Parrish, Overland Park
This story was originally published October 8, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Letters: KC readers discuss Missouri Amendment 3, pandemic ‘hoax’ and Democrats’ plots."