Dear Editor,

Media sanctioned attack ads have become one of the true evils of our time. Mr. Harper’s alarming attack ads represent the wit and skill of exceedingly ruthless people, who deliberately insult somebody’s personal integrity by an all-consuming smear campaign. On the whole, degrading smear campaigns are the strategic weapons of the reckless, the immoral, the almost criminal. It surely saves us the trouble of liking them.

Far more thought and care should be given to what is acceptable by Canadian broadcasting standards, unless those guardians of the moral code have surrendered their mandate to undisguised character assassination. Moral principles have lost their appeal when fuel-injected malice has become a matter of campaigning.

Mr. Harper keeps doing it for the same reason we engage an exterminator who puts an end to unpleasant varmints. By his very nature, he is who he is and nothing much else makes it different. How do these people manage to greet their wives and offspring at the end of the day without faking their depraved souls?

Even if these disgusting ads were written in a form of questions, the language doesn’t take the malice out of the slurs. The voice of reason tells us that every single Tory MP is guilty by association. How, indeed, do they deal with their artificial sincerity, when the faces have become so unpleasant? Then again, a party nourishing itself through warfare has to uphold that predatory appearance. Nastiness seems to move the wheels of Tory passion.

Wherever one sees toxic behaviour, a short list of principles, political pomposity, and elevated arrogance, the campaign cutthroats have set up their war camps. It is well to remember that Mr. Harper permitted this radioactive fallout, meaning that he authorized and acted with reckless disregard, portraying a person as someone who behaves in a disloyal or treacherous manner to his country. It looks as if justice is acceptable whatever politicians do, while injustice is whatever prevents them from doing it.

People aren’t morons to make out the vicious force of evil. Do they really believe that a relentless distribution of insulting slogans will persuade the voting public to buy these libelous slanders? Courtesy toward others rests upon learned behaviours, infinitely fragile but in truth never directly cultured by some.

Courtesy is not dead, it has merely become an unwelcome social obligation; ceasing to exist from the rules of acceptable parliamentary values. We should try to find it in all politicians, for every party has its upsetting lunatic fringe. In the end, which of these three leaders we deem less likely to cause us harm becomes a matter of faith and personal scrutiny.

H. Funké, Edgewater, B.C.