Dear Editor,
We cant give up without a fight! Why even bother? What do we need or want that we are not getting now? By hook and by crook we are losing our rights— losing our livelihood— losing our right to choose everything that affects our lives.
It is every bit as bad as when King George was calling the shots. Back then, ordinary and extraordinary American citizens got together, agreed on a course of action, and took control. We will have to do that again.
We don’t have a King George this time. What we have is even worse— politicians! A cabal of self-serving minions loyal to themselves and/or soulless corporate “persons.” They take our livelihood (jobs) and ship them overseas, then keep the extra profits overseas where they are not shared (taxed) with their source (us).
They take our schools, our prisons our infrastructure and God only knows what else and turn them all from “public service centers” into “profit centers!” They take our healthcare and turn it over to the masked bandits of big pharma, big insurance and, most likely, big politicians. They have resurrected that old phrase, “Your money or your life!”
Without a strong institutional basis the nation can find itself vulnerable to authoritarian populism. Skilful Demagogues emerge and seize power. It’s all downhill from that point onwards.
By now it should be obvious to even the meanest intelligence that Trump must be hauled out of the White House. There is really no point in beating that dead horse any further.
What we must do is expose all the sordid details about how he tricked us. If it could be done once it can be done again. If there is a next time we may not be lucky enough to escape the dire consequences.
Who knows? We may not have escaped them this time. Unquenchable partisanship and greed must rate high on the “How come?” list.
Beware, greed and partisanship have not been quenched and they have no conscience. They are still out there circulating among our Senators and Representatives. Our Congress Critters will be changing some laws and writing new ones to, ostensibly, prevent this near catastrophe from happening again. One or more of those Congress Critters will be looking to install a secret back or trap door so he can access the easy money.
Certainly, the electorate will need to retake their civics classes or something. This is a really big and difficult problem that must be resolved. There is no alternative.
Rewriting our defense, our recovery and our humanitarian plans should be easy. Trump has provided us with glaring examples of everything that could go wrong. If we do not take this opportunity to, as my dad used to say, “straighten up and fly right,” we will be consigned to the dust heap of history and the list of the many other failed states.
There is one fly in the ointment, so to speak, that is the nature of man. It seems that almost everyone is preoccupied with “looking out for number one.” That has worked for Putin, but it’s not something of which “we the people” would approve. Maybe we should reconsider the many other forms of keeping order and distributing the munificence of our creativity and our natural world.
The sharp tongues of past “discussions” about type of government and distribution of our natural and developed wealth have left wounds still bleeding. We must find a way to put these grievances behind us and proceed to a state of cooperation and compromise. Not an easy (but never-the-less essential) task. Failing that, I can confidently predict that the end is near— and it wont be pretty.
—Jerry Baird