StratfordToday received the following Letter to the Editor from Larry Baswick in response to an article published earlier this week.
I read of some disappointment on the part of council with the demeanor of the public at council meetings as being rude and uncivil.
That is a regrettable but established way of doing business in the 21st century due, in no small part, by the increased use of social media. The anonymity it provides emboldens people to say things they would only think in decades past. This impunity has leaked into face-to-face discourse and will only worsen.
But, X (formerly known as Twitter) is not alone in this social change. People are genuinely angry at the state of affairs in most western countries with good reason and they are more prone to voicing this discontent publicly.
Municipally, beginning here in Stratford, the glass factory debacle, continually rising taxes, woke thinking by politicians and bureaucrats, disgraceful road and other infrastructure conditions, and the like are dominating the political landscape.
Provincially, green space scandal, police as observers, increased tolerance of low level scofflaws, educational absurdities, etc. are psychologically corrosive.
Federal stupidities on an almost daily basis are too numerous to list.
People are fed up in a country of which they were fanatically proud which has become an international laughing stock. There is an anger in Canada not before witnessed which is what council, being the most accessible, is having to deal with.
Most of this mental malaise and subsequent eruptions of emotion are the fault of the so called leadership in Ottawa.
Council will continue to suffer until there is substantial change up north.
Larry Baswick
