Reader is shocked by ATV rudeness

Dear True,
I am writing in response to the startlingly rude letters printed this week in the Cook County News Herald, bashing the views of my friend and mentor John Haluska. He is described as delusional, deceitful, disrespectful, false and “close to slanderous” for his opinion piece challenging the rights of ATV owners to unlimited access of ATVs in Cook County.
Ms. Elizabeth Perry also challenges him as not being a fifth-generation immigrant to Cook County. I wonder what the native Anishinabe population thinks about this.
As a 20th generation immigrant to the United States during the reign of Elizabeth I, I don’t feel very proud of my ancestors: they were thieves and murderers unless they were killed by the Indian natives. I have interviewed dozens of descendants of Cook County immigrants and none of them has said that ATVs represent a way of life in their families. In fact, looking to Wikipedia, I find that ATVs first appeared in the 1980s.
Sometimes dialogue is difficult if not impossible. True himself, along with my friend John Haluska and various other readers, attempted a dialogue with Rhonda Silence and after many attempts at communication there was an irretrievable breakdown, just as is now happening with the county ATV committee in which two members have resigned (Sheriff Mark Falk and County Attorney Tim Scannell).
The truth is that the ATV Club and its adherents are the minority. Their rude accusations in public venues will perhaps mobilize their own supporters, but most people in Cook County, “locals” and newcomers alike, value the peace and silence of the woods, understand that the tourist base that sustains them comes here for that peace, and respect the fragile ecology that sustains our bedrock-based ecology.
I and most of my friends and allies support a limited access for ATV riders to designated trails. The county, the US Forest Service and the DNR are struggling to open trails but also to avoid becoming a national destination for riders who think big noise and sensitive environmental depredation are their God-given rights.
Nancye Belding
Grand Marais