KCRCC: Words matter

My wife and I are planning a trip to Rwanda. We are studying the country and its history as we prepare for our trip. We have become more aware of the horrific genocide that occurred there in 1994.

Then, more than a million people were slaughtered in less than 100 days. Family and former friends, people with similar ancestry, methodically butchered one another. Their rallying cry was to “eradicate the cockroaches.”

So, it was with dread I read similar words being attributed to Mr. Dan Bell with the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee (KCRCC). In describing local business leaders and others not in lock step with them, he was reported to have said: “We can scatter the freaking cockroaches.”

Words matter. These words dehumanize people and such words and the attitude behind them led to the atrocities of the Rwanda Genocide and the Holocaust in Germany.

I implore the KCRCC and those affiliated with it to strongly, and publicly, reject these words and the attitudes behind them. If they will not, then one should ask: Is this really the Idaho Republican Party I knew and want to be affiliated with? After all, it was Lincoln himself who said, “We defeat our enemies by making them our friends.”

LUKE RUSSELL

Hayden