News
We vote for politicians who promise us tax cuts, entitlement programs, costly foreign nation building and balanced budgets. Why can't we have it?
Logical thinking people realize this is a deception that will only take place in Camelot or another Utopia for which we are all searching.
Michael Kinsley, a frequent guest of William Buckley on his program “Firing Line,” makes the following statement: “The notion that this country is divinely sanctioned with a special mission in the world has become a litmus test for patriotism. The theory that Americans are better than everybody else is endorsed by an overwhelming majority of U.S. voters.”
Waving a flag is fine, but remember it is only a symbol and we must be aware that a country doesn't progress unless it recognizes that it may not have the happiest people in
the world.
Compared to Third World countries we are superior, but the past is deteriorating while many other countries are passing us economically, in energy, infrastructure and other areas.
None of this is simple incompetence. For decades we have seen social services, education, policing, public health, environmental protection and infrastructure steadily declining from tax cuts for the wealthy and military spending.
For half a century, free market purists have denigrated the essential role that government performs as some terrible liberal plot. Politicians have duped lower- and middle-class whites into believing their economic pains are a result of too much government while corporate profits and CEO salaries soared.
I've been disappointed in most politicians and the voters with their total disregard of the underbelly of society here and abroad. They have been hidden from society since they finished their fighting for the wealthy slave owning beneficiaries of the American Revolution and forgotten soon after.
These are people who have been abandoned to their fates, as it is the gods of greed that seem to rule. The hockey mom who purchased a winter home in Scottsdale, Ariz., in the million-dollar range considers herself a member of the real America. I am familiar with the real America in Scottsdale, which didn't look like the real America I'm familiar with.
Part of real America came back into view during Katrina but has now faded into the sunset. Watching the haplessness of a permanent underclass of African Americans living in New Orleans' ghettos is shameful. Even before the hurricane, they lived in rotting housing complexes, attended ill-equipped schools and lacked adequate police protection.
This section of American life is duplicated in most cities today. Only the white population is creeping into this same category of Americans. Help for the indigent is vilified by using the word “socialism.” I define it insensitive or un-American.
If Americans want to flaunt their flags, they must provide something beside food kitchens, food banks and homeless shelters to aggrandize our country. I commend those volunteers who provide these essentials for those needs, which I donate to, but this doesn't provide the dignity that humans need for a healthy esteem of one's self and others.
I was too young during the '30s depression to be humiliated by soup lines and charity but am aware of what this does to those in this situation. Those of us still living without charity and a roof over our heads can be oblivious to those other humans, but something in our political system must be changed if we want to glorify our country, and please don't use the words freedom or liberty as an excuse. History proves that change comes from the bottom up.
My concerns don't meet the litmus test of a patriot, but one's views are a product of one's life experiences.
Don Cooks lives in Nevada City.
Logical thinking people realize this is a deception that will only take place in Camelot or another Utopia for which we are all searching.
Michael Kinsley, a frequent guest of William Buckley on his program “Firing Line,” makes the following statement: “The notion that this country is divinely sanctioned with a special mission in the world has become a litmus test for patriotism. The theory that Americans are better than everybody else is endorsed by an overwhelming majority of U.S. voters.”
Waving a flag is fine, but remember it is only a symbol and we must be aware that a country doesn't progress unless it recognizes that it may not have the happiest people in
the world.
Compared to Third World countries we are superior, but the past is deteriorating while many other countries are passing us economically, in energy, infrastructure and other areas.
None of this is simple incompetence. For decades we have seen social services, education, policing, public health, environmental protection and infrastructure steadily declining from tax cuts for the wealthy and military spending.
For half a century, free market purists have denigrated the essential role that government performs as some terrible liberal plot. Politicians have duped lower- and middle-class whites into believing their economic pains are a result of too much government while corporate profits and CEO salaries soared.
I've been disappointed in most politicians and the voters with their total disregard of the underbelly of society here and abroad. They have been hidden from society since they finished their fighting for the wealthy slave owning beneficiaries of the American Revolution and forgotten soon after.
These are people who have been abandoned to their fates, as it is the gods of greed that seem to rule. The hockey mom who purchased a winter home in Scottsdale, Ariz., in the million-dollar range considers herself a member of the real America. I am familiar with the real America in Scottsdale, which didn't look like the real America I'm familiar with.
Part of real America came back into view during Katrina but has now faded into the sunset. Watching the haplessness of a permanent underclass of African Americans living in New Orleans' ghettos is shameful. Even before the hurricane, they lived in rotting housing complexes, attended ill-equipped schools and lacked adequate police protection.
This section of American life is duplicated in most cities today. Only the white population is creeping into this same category of Americans. Help for the indigent is vilified by using the word “socialism.” I define it insensitive or un-American.
If Americans want to flaunt their flags, they must provide something beside food kitchens, food banks and homeless shelters to aggrandize our country. I commend those volunteers who provide these essentials for those needs, which I donate to, but this doesn't provide the dignity that humans need for a healthy esteem of one's self and others.
I was too young during the '30s depression to be humiliated by soup lines and charity but am aware of what this does to those in this situation. Those of us still living without charity and a roof over our heads can be oblivious to those other humans, but something in our political system must be changed if we want to glorify our country, and please don't use the words freedom or liberty as an excuse. History proves that change comes from the bottom up.
My concerns don't meet the litmus test of a patriot, but one's views are a product of one's life experiences.
Don Cooks lives in Nevada City.
