The 2024 presidential election is starting to resemble a horror story that the combined talents of H.P Lovecraft and Stephen King working together could never have conjured during their darkest and most creative hours. Donald Trump is back, despite an unmatched history of epic criminality rarely seen in the annals of Western man. However, there is one issue and subject that we can collectively as a nation thank Trump for. Donald Trump has, with a crushing finality, destroyed and eradicated the toxic and destructive notion of “American Exceptionalism.” Trump and his dual political/criminal ascension have-thankfully-laid to ruin and rubble the noxious and deadly belief of “American Exceptionalism” which for generations has permeated the American political and spiritual landscape.
Americans will never again be able to boast and swagger and showcase their perceived natural superiority over other nations and other people. We can no longer boast to the world that Americans cherish and uphold the truth. We can no longer proclaim or boast about our love of democracy and the letter of the law. Trump and his epic criminality, which inexplicably has been embraced and nurtured and, yes, admired by millions of Americans has sent the world a clear and, yes, harrowing message. The message is this-truth — science — the fragile bundle of ideas that create authentic and long-term democracy-none of these matters.
What matters today are the big lies that feed and empower the “Ugly American.” Indeed, Trump has opened doors that have polarized the nation-and there is no end in sight. Thus, we can collectively as a nation be grateful for Trump’s one true and beneficial contribution to the world.
Donald Trump has effectively by showcasing epic dishonesty, lies, malice, and malignant hatred laid to waste-again with finality-the toxic and damning belief of American exceptionalism. In that regard the American people and indeed the world can thank Trump for a job well done.
JIM SAWYER, West Edmonds, Wash.
This is in reference to your lead article regarding Biden’s $90 billion to rural America for high speed internet in the 4/1/24 issue [“President Biden and Democrats in Congress funneled $90 billion into high-speed internet for rural areas, with the goal of bringing universal broadband to all Americans by 2030. But Republican lawmakers condemned these projects as ‘socialism’ and resist their implementation” by Dana Milbank].
I live in Geneva, N.Y., population approximately 14,000, located between Rochester and Syracuse. We have had high-speed fiber internet for some time. The fiber optic companies and utilities are busy putting up new and taller poles here as well, leaving two unsightly poles where once there was one. I once got my fiber internet, TV, and phone service this way from Verizon. I now get this service from a small local company, “Community Broad Band”, which broadcasts their signals from antenna located on top of the local Methodist church’s tower. Subscribers have a very small dish receiver on their roofs.
The fiber service gave me a handful of TV channels and some streaming entertainment. Broad Band Community gives me hundreds of TV channels, all of the streaming service I wish to subscribe to, and all at a lower price. It is a small local company, with technicians who, when problems arise, give prompt advice over the phone, or show up at the house promptly when that is not sufficient.
My point is, there are cheaper, better, and less obtrusive ways of getting broadband to rural communities than by optic fiber.
LARRY CAMPELL, Geneva, N.Y.
On reading Joe Conason’s article [“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Farce — And Our Tragedy, 4/15/24 TPP], after four paragraphs of ad hominem attacks on RFK Jr. as farcical Presidential candidate, he mentions he wrote a favorable article about him in the past. “Fair and balanced” I guess.
I just finished “The Wuhan Cover Up” by RFK Jr., published recently, and I was impressed with the tight scholarship, persistent argumentation and voluminous footnotes. There was nothing farcical about it l that I could see.
I would recommend, w/o ad hominem, Joe read even one chapter to see what he thinks.
BUSHROD LAKE, Santa Fe, NM
We are in a world of trouble, literally as well as figuratively. Yet, it seems necessary to review a short list of the threats to our existence as a species, as well as to our status as a civilized nation.
Let us begin with the sky above and the seas at our feet, all becoming so charged with carbon dioxide that they have run out of the capacity to forgive us our overbearing use of fossil fuels. We seriously need to move on that, if only we could withdraw ourselves from our frazzled attempts to maintain business as usual.
Then we must urgently address the spectacular ability of global capitalism to turn valuable resources into worthless garbage and toxic waste with ever-increasing celerity. Rather than a straight line from nature’s bounty to a landfill or brown field, the supply chain should take the form of a circle—reduce, reuse, and recycle, or do without. Can we work on that?
And let’s take on the massive maldistribution of wealth from the places and persons that produced it to the ownership class that appropriated the lion’s share of it. From this one aspect of how imperial capitalism works proceeds nearly every social and political problem the world weeps over, from homelessness and hunger to mass migration and war.
So where else does the ruling class direct our outrage, and their media lackeys our focus, but to the “woke agenda,” i.e., the questioning of cultural assumptions by which the ruling class has always ruled. Surely enough, the misdirection works, and too many of us end up fighting each other over the racial composition and sexual disposition of our population — instead of fighting for our collective human existence.
Just two words should suffice: Focus, people!
JEFFREY HOBBS, Springfield, Ill.
New York Times columnist David French wrote an April 8 column titled “Netanyahu is making the same mistake America made in Iraq,” and it is beyond me how he can get away with it.
It is not possible that Israel could make the same mistake as the US did in Iraq, since the US in Iraq happened from America being the aggressor, just as Hamas was upon Israel. Israel is defending (sort of) and the US and its attack upon Iraq had nothing to do with defending — the Iraqis were defending.
French’s approach is racist, because all he has as a common denominator to claim Tel Aviv’s fight is the same as Washington’s fight with Iraq — as both governments are fighting Muslims — which he conveniently calls “terrorists.”
French says both the US in Iraq and Israel in Gaza are “fighting terrorists,” and that when “in a fight against terrorists, providing humanitarian aid isn’t just a moral imperative, it’s a military necessity.”
French makes reference to the “laws of war” a lot in his column. He must then be aware of some of the basic workings of the “laws of war.” For instance, when people are attacked by “war aggression” and they defend themselves (as Iraqis did), they are not “terrorists,” they are fighting within international law, they have a right to defend themselves. The “war” aggressor is doing the terrorism.
As with the US in Iraq, French gives Israel the right to use violence in Gaza if done within the “laws of war.” But culd an “occupying power” that had invaded the US mainland access “the technical legal status of an invading army once it took control of an invaded region” … of America? Never in a million years would French accept it, accept that a foreign military could access the “laws of war” to kill Americans and occupy US soil.
The “laws of war” are such criminal nonsense — for instance, could Belize access the “laws of war” to invade America, kill Americans and occupy US soil?
The “laws of war” are nothing more than your ability to do “war.”
FRANK ERICKSON, Minneapolis, Minn.
Our horrific and shameful insurrection (Jan. 6, 2021) of the conned, duped, B.S.’d and lied-to segment of our population via the “cultisized” speiling of conmen dating back to civilization’s origin, and notably from all the “Gods” created by the emperors of the Roman Empire to the feudalistic scourges, “flat Earthers” B.S. to instill the fear and ability to manipulate and pillage for centuries.
Religion has been one of the primary facilitators from its creation forward, that has produced the likes of the Jim Jones, David Koresh and Warren Jeffs of the world, and their “cultisized” B.S. and duping of the aforementioned and today’s pet rock, Q-Anon and the multitude of today’s schemes and scams that are growing detrimental to lives’ existence if these perpetrators of all kinds of wrongdoing are not identified at one’s earliest age in life and throughout.
We have failed in numerable ways to deal with “technologies,” abilities and its facilitation of our “societal reprobates” as listed prior. We are unfortunately guilty of being duped by the “moneyed interests” for far too long and excessively costly both financial and threatening to lives in multiple ways unabated. We continue to substantiate “We” are a nation, while living in the “realities” of the 21st century and governing like it was the 16th century.
FRANK ROHRIG, Milford, Conn.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2024
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