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Letter to the Editor: Time for Desperate Measures

We live in a time and a place where our elected representatives – by and large – are beholden to their patrons, rather than to their constituents. They answer to no one (except themselves and their keepers) and exempt themselves from the rules that they make.

We live in a time and a place where the disparity between the income of corporations and their executives is radically beyond the grasp of working people. And, yet, despite all the loot that the rich have accumulated and stashed, it’s not enough. So our Congress is intent on denying the safety nets ordinary people depend on, while giving even more money to those hoarding what they already have.

We live in a time and a place where our legitimate mainstream media, hitherto the bastion of freedom and justice, have been summarily dismissed and replaced with alternative facts, truths, and realities. Bloggers and slanted nonsense are held in the same regard as our responsible press.

We live in a time and a place where political gerrymandering has corrupted our Electoral College such that twice – twice! – in a generation, the people’s choices for President were overruled and citizens have been denied their right to vote.

We live in a time and a place where we are isolated from the rest of the world, often the brunt of its jokes. We’re the only nation in the world not to sign on to global environmental protection agreements and accords. We’ve vacated our promises to trade with, protect, and support other countries (which now question whether we can be trusted anymore).

We live in a time and a place where moneyed people against public education, investment people who caused our near financial collapse, opportunistic people who inflated the prices of critical medicines, fuel executives who know naught about diplomacy, hunting advocates, and people whose memories fail them on imperative legal matters, are now running the very government offices they had hijacked…but scientists and other wise or knowledgeable people are forbidden to speak truth to power. Talk about double standards!

We live in a time and a place where a destructive, conflicted, ignorant, narcissistic, self-serving, delusional, degenerate believes he’s entitled to follow his own misguided interpretations of the words enshrined in our Constitution and guiding documents. And that his businesses should benefit from the country’s business. Other nations’ authoritarian leaders look to follow this lead to which they’ve been given license for even more power, more money, more corruption.

We live in a time and a place where some of us sign petitions, write letters to editors, make telephone calls, knock on doors, use every technological advantage to speak our hearts and minds, march on occasion, gather for community and committee meetings … but our representatives decline to address us, collectively, in town hall meetings.

Indeed, we live in desperate times.

What kind of desperate measures – if any – should we be taking?

 

Rev. Bruce Joffe

Sturgeon Bay, Wis.

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