From my point of view, all legislators, City Council members and [Buncombe] county commissioners are merely employees of The People, since we hire them (by voting) and pay their salaries (through taxes). This is the perspective from which I evaluate information on, about or from anyone political.
Much of the political commentary I read in Mountain Xpress takes the obsequious position of a subject willingly submissive to the perceived politically powerful while bowing compliantly and blindly obedient to that nearly godlike entity we call "government." The commentary by Nelda Holder, “You Say Po-tay-to,” in the June 22 issue is no exception. In this commentary, she gives the impression that she fully supports the artificial and coercively perpetuated dichotomy that is the current "two-party system" ("opposite political party?") where the elected employees of The People actively engage in deceiving their employers into thinking they have no choice but to submit to their employees' illegitimately acquired power and control.
We, The People, neither need nor want a set of employees who assume near-dictatorial control over otherwise private and personal aspects of our lives, such as taxation of our legitimately earned incomes, criminalization of a personal decision to not wear a seat belt while driving or riding in a vehicle on public roadways or demanding we go to them to ask permission to modify our privately owned homes (or not and suffer a fine), which ends up resulting in increased taxation (higher property tax). This system of "government" is upside-down and, in her commentary, Holder offers nothing that would advance a correction of this wrong. Indeed, her words only serve to perpetuate the inequity.
— John Saunders
Asheville