About 15 years ago, my disgust with the Republican Party reached its peak. I made a quick list. nnThe Republicans/Conservatives want to:
• Relitigate the outcome of the Civil War to subjugate Black people;
• Repeal the New Deal and keep their boot on the neck of the working people;
• Subjugate women via denial of reproductive rights;
• Do away with unions, because unions oppose fascism/
They were, in fact, fascists.
Now, some 15 years later, their Five Stooges on the Supreme Court have ended Roe v. Wade and allowed the lawmakers in the red states to truly chattelize women. Breeders only.
They have plans to end Social Security and Medicare. They are out in the open about it! They want to starve old people.
No longer are they mere fascists, they are now outright Nazis!
Let us now remind the people that these Nazis want to starve old people and make women chattel.
JAMES B. DECK, Roswell, N.M.
Re: “Nature’s rights are coming soon” (3/15/23 TPP): Columnist Frank Lingo’s shocking testimonial that “human impact” has left 66% of the oceans with over 400 dead zones … as well as floating islands of plastic trash, reminds me of the familiar “Faustian Pact.”
As is well known, in literature Dr. Faustus is an old scholar who made an agreement with a demon named Mephistopheles to sell his soul in exchange for unlimited knowledge.
Thus, the proverbial “Faustian Pact,” which can be characterized as doing or accepting something for present gain without considering its future consequences.
It seems then that humanity made a Faustian Pact with a chemical demon known as plastic.
But is the damage and ugliness with which that demon has defaced our planet worth the convenience it has given us in exchange? All we need to convince us that plastic is like a monstrous serpent which will continue to strangle us, is to look at newspaper and magazine photos that show placid streams clogged by plastic waste, and beautiful marine life entangled and dying in agony by the tons of plastic in the oceans.
As his death approached, Dr. Faustus attempted to build an ideal society to justify his existence, but his plan fails. Nevertheless, he is rescued from eternal damnation by a choir of angels who speak the motto: “He who exerts himself in constant striving, him we can save.”
Thus, to save our Earth from excessive plastic, we (like Dr. Faustus) must constantly strive to rid our habitat of that abomination.
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, Calif.
“Democracy Stands,” said President Biden while in Ukraine. Let’s be clear on on thing, “war” has nothing to do with democracy. Anyone who is attacked by a “war” aggressor, whether they are democratic or non-democratic, has a right to defend themselves.
They are playing the “democracy” game to try and convince us that a non-democratic superpower that attacks innocent democratic people in Ukraine is different than a democratic superpower that attacks innocent non-democratic people in Iraq.
Ukrainians who live in a democracy do not have more a right to defend than innocent non-democratic Iraqis defending against an invasion done by a democratic America. We in America make Ukraine about democracy to try and soften our collective guilt for what the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan.
America gets its “war” powers from unstoppable weaponry, not from democracy. The United States is piggybacking on a democratic Ukraine’s justifiable right to defend, trying to make a this look like all democracies fight the same “good war” fight. The democracies are automatically always on the side of truth and justice, you don’t have to look any farther than the murderous Iraq “war” for proof that this is nonsense.
FRANK ERICKSON, Minneapolis, Minn.
“There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” — Winston Churchill
“With great power comes great responsibility.”—Spider-Man
With the 2024 election as incentive, MAGA/GOP is amping up its neo-isolationist rhetoric with heavy criticism of US aid to embattled Ukraine. Citing past debacles in Vietnam and Afghanistan, MAGA piles on with Ukraine’s corrupt past and its distance from our shores. These observations are true but do not tell the entire story.
It isn’t so much what MAGA says, but what it omits. They take their marching orders from Donald Trump and his America First propaganda that lambasts NATO as “obsolete.” Consider the source. His own National Security Advisor John Bolton branded POTUS #45 as “a Putin loving moron,” and his decades old dream of a Trump Tower Moscow eliminates his claim by putting himself over his country.
NATO was formed in 1949 to protect free European countries from Stalinist incursion with its Article Five guarantee that “an attack on one is an attack on all.” Western Europe did not want to fall under the hammer and sickle of The Evil Empire following World War II. POTUS #33 Harry Truman, a World War I veteran, rejected thoughts of repeating our isolationist stance after The Great War, which led to the rise of fascism with Hitler, Mussolini and Franco that culminated in World War II.
The Alliance worked. No European territory was lost to communism, World War III was averted, and the collapse of The Iron Curtain and the USSR gave democracy a temporary victory. Subjugated Eastern Europe was freed from the Russian yoke, with many joining NATO to preserve their freedom from future Russian oppression. That future moment is now upon us.
Are there disruptive issues within NATO? Absolutely, with increased funding by member states at the top of the list. But weakening or disbanding the alliance could create a replication of the Sudetenland appeasement by Chamberlain (“peace in our time”) to Hitler at the 1938 Munich Conference, a diplomatic failure that revealed Der Fuehrer’s sinister intentions. If the astute observations of Churchill and Spider-Man aren’t enough, then consider the clairvoyance of Albert Einstein — “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
ED ENGLER, Sebring, Fla.
Re: “Bullying Librarians is for Know-Nothings” by Katrina vanden Heuvel (3/15/23 TPP). The very idea that censorship yet lingers in our country is more than embarrassing. It’s an affront to our intellectual heritage and Jeffersonian ideals.
When attempts are made to inhibit librarians in their choices of whast to place on library shelves, the stage is set for diminishment of democratic principles and return of dogmatic narrowness. It has taken Western civilization centuries to free itself from suffocatingly dogmatic pressure — dungeon, fire and sword. Retreat to monkish obedience cannot be an option for us now.
We have to let the sunshine in, through courage tempered by humane compromise. Our spirits have been freed from outgrown heresies.
WILLIAM DAUENHAUER, Willowick, Ohio
This is a response to “Free Speech, not Corporate Control,” by Hank Kalet (2/1/23 TPP): Considering corporate control of speech, I’d like to recommend the “walks like a duck” rule.
If an organization of whatever legal form feels to most people like government in effect, then it is.
Nike is just some guy selling gym shoes. Facebook or Twitter are parts of the public square of our day. Managing the public square must be a governmental function.
Then, once we agree that a particular organization is government in effect, those affected by that organization must vote to elect the people who run it. In this case, it would be a worldwide election of the boards of Facebook and Twitter.
I vote for those who run my local electrical utility. It is well run by good people who are paid well but not outrageously, the grid is maintained well, rates are reasonable. It’s just a matter of taking this concept and applying it as appropriate.
JERROLD RICHARDS, Lyle, Wash.
“Among the many myths in the Bible,” begins Frank Lingo [2/15/23 TPP], “there is the assertion that man has dominion over the Earth.” He continues by noting that man hasn’t handled it very well. That seems to be pretty obvious by now.
He doesn’t go on to note how Genesis 3 introduces “the serpent,” who was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, “Yea, hath God said ‘Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” There is someone here besides Man (and Woman). We go on from the Beginning of the World to how it ends, many pages later, in the Book of Revelation, which happens to the Earth and to Satan (the serpent), and to man. The last chapter tells what’s in store for man: One end for unbelievers and another for believers: a New Heaven and Earth.
How this all will come about is told in the party between Genesis and Revelation, Old and New Testaments.
How does a Man decide what is “myth” or “truth”? One reads the whole book to see the facts as they’re laid out. Can one really pick and choose what to believe or not? The Bible says to try it out and see what you think. And not just a few verses or stories here and there. Read it as if it were a book — because it is. You’d be amazed how much it tells us.
CHERYL LOVELY, Presque Isle, Maine
Thank you for printing Ted Rall’s columns in The Progressive Populist. Sometimes he annoys me and gets me to talking out loud to myself, but more often, he says what I should be thinking or what I haven’t yet put into words. He’s a valuable commentator for that reason: he thinks things through, cuts through the noise, and offers sharp food for thought.
DAVID C. SMITH, Palatine, Ill.
From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2023
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