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Letter: The world has changed, Mr. Talbott

This letter is in response to Mr. Talbott’s opinion piece entitled “Our freedoms turned upside down.”

While I no longer reside in the valley, I do occasionally read the Post Independent and must say I was surprised to see such a masterpiece penned by Mr. Talbott on the editorial page. While some of us express ourselves with oils, chalk or poetry, Mr. Talbott dabbles in bitterness, misogyny, racism and homophobia with splashes of cognitive dissonance, all neatly crafted in the form of pseudo-paragraph prose. One can only speculate, but I see strong hints of influence from SNL’s “Grumpy Old Man” and “Drunk Uncle,” topped with the panache of Rush Limbaugh.

It is amazing to read someone contradict themselves so many times in a one-page compositional explosion of word diarrhea; on one hand lamenting loss of freedoms he has experienced while simultaneously criticizing the expansion of freedoms of women and homosexuals.



Covert racism is nicely tucked away under the auspices of illegal immigration and false claims of voter fraud. Seriously, does Mr. Talbott have nightmares of undocumented workers voting, and then wake up and assume it to be true?

I think it is safe to say that the “freedom” Mr. Talbott really cares about is economic in nature, so long as he directly benefits. The Randian freshwater economic policies that I suspect he ascribes to are directly responsible for creating massive income inequality in this country, often forcing two parents to work in order to make ends meet, or even giving one parent the “freedom” to work multiple jobs. These laissez-faire policies also give “freedoms” to insurance companies and hospitals to charge you outrageous sums of money, because “How much are you willing to pay to live?” is what makes maximum profit possible.



The world has changed, Mr. Talbott. You obviously have not. Next time you feel the need to write an angry, aimless rant, take a deep breath, empathize with the perspectives of your fellow humans (not just the straight white ones), and then reconsider spewing the word vomit.

Ryan Ratkiewicz

Commerce City


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