It makes no sense. CEO’s want to kill jobs to “funnel more money to themselves and top investors.” [Re: “Is your job in the robot kill path?” (4/15/21 TPP)]
Well, does anyone need an advanced degree in economics to know that killing jobs eliminates wages? And if folks can’t earn wages in the job market because most work is done by unpaid robots, what will happen to those CEOs and their investors when there are no customers to buy what their robots produce?
Also, how can a patient with no money pay the keeper of the robot surgeon that performed his operation? Or the keeper of the robot lawyer that defended him in court?
The only people I see earning wages in this future Alice in Wonderland lunacy are soldiers or professional athletes. Can you imagine, for example, a country going to war using robot soldiers to fight another country’s robot soldiers? Of course not! Human courage is essential to fight wars. And where could you find anyone who is willing to watch an athletic contest between robots? Nowhere, of course, because agility, endurance and strength are vital athletic faculties with which only humans are endowed.
Thus, this is my advice to today’s parents: Encourage your children to become soldiers or professional athletes so they’ll never go hungry because they have no job.
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, Calif.
MAGA: Make America Great Again! We need Donald Trump to come back. Are you kidding me? “I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em.” Do you know what his MAGA really stands for? Based on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, it stands for Mayhem Against Good Americans! However, if based upon the fact that Trump’s inaction in dealing with the coronavirus caused over 29 million Americans to be infected and 540,000-plus Americans to die, with the counts still rising, MAGA stands for Murder Against Good Americans! Death to Americans!
How many foreign powers or terrorists caused more American deaths? Shouldn’t Trump be tried in court for being responsible for at least half the 540,000 deaths? Instead of him considering another term for president, a long jail term seems more appropriate.
How is it that Trump supporters think he’s God’s gift? Their mistake is that they looked up to the heavens for answers when suddenly Trump appeared. But if you live in reality, you should have looked in the other direction; down into hell. We all know that Trump has certain behaviors or habits and they’re all contrary to the seven heavenly virtues; charity, chastity, diligence, humility, kindness, patience and temperance. Instead of virtues, he prefers the faults or defects of The Seven Deadly Sins namely pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth.
These are often thought to be abuses of natural faculties or passions. And, as we have seen, Trump usually takes them to extremes. We know that Satan had disciples and was persuasive and we know that Trump never wants to be outdone so it wasn’t surprising that he inflicted most Republican members of Congress with the same diseased mindset.
Will this unabashed need for greed and power ever end? Thank goodness the results of the Presidential election were not fixed. Now all we need to do is fix the rest of the government, on all levels. Heaven help us and make sure we look up and not down.
ALVIN GOLDBERG, Great Neck, N.Y.
The “open carry” law is one that should be eliminated immediately. It allows misfits bent on mayhem to roam the streets with the tools needed for their intended mayhem. Remember Boulder??
Who is in love with open carry? It’s people who want to flaunt their superior position over the public rank and file. It’s a sick impulse that should not be encouraged let alone allowed.
Since it is pretty near impossible to conceal an assault rifle, the open carry law provides a remedy for those with
twisted minds.
Open carry, in my view, is evidence of just how sick the U.S. has become.
RUDY DALPRAY, Safford, Ariz.
I can’t remember if you (i.e., your paper) ever mentioned the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, but your latest issue (4/15/21 TPP) sounded to me as if you’ve been reading him. Maybe it’s just me, but things he wrote sound like he was writing for your paper. I read his works a couple weeks ago in the Library of America’s publication, “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics.” Everything he wrote about, how things were in the years between 1918 and 1971, could be said today. He has many valuable insights about nationalism, power, economics, societies, cultures and how the world is. He’s the one who wrote “The Serenity Prayer”: “God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”
As I look back over my last 70 years, I would say that for all our changes, there really aren’t many changes. People are still people. And what hasn’t changed is God’s Word. (Thank God for that!) And Niebuhr is extremely helpful, highly recommended.
CHERYL LOVELY, Presque Isle, Maine
Perhaps my personal “favorite” of today’s growing number of radical-right-wing conservative-Republican “greatest hits” of operating out of what Paul Krugman calls “bad faith” and what Jane Mayer calls using “stealth tactics”is how they try to deceive, mislead, and fool the public into believing that they want to “save” and “reform” Social Security when, in reality, many of them want to cut/reduce the benefits and, eventually, to abolish it entirely. Just one example of this is a former Speaker of the House who often said that he wanted to “save” and “reform” Social Security, yet right at his own website you would discover that he tried on several occasions to have the benefits cut/reduced. So, their way of “saving” and “reforming” Social Security is to totally abolish it. That is slick. You have to be a step ahead of these people.
STEWART B. EPSTEIN, Rochester, N.Y.
With his passing many Americans are paying homage and tribute to Rush Limbaugh. I agree that it is important to pay tribute to Limbaugh’s decades-long achievements. One such achievement was Limbaugh’s enormous contributions to racial polarization and xenophobia. Who can forget Limbaugh’s allowing a true believer on his AM talk show who serenaded “Obama the Magic Negro”? Or his amusing commentary that NFL Football games was like watching “a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons.” Or his insightful renaming of the N.B.A the T.B.A for “Thug Basketball Association.” “Stop calling them teams. Call em gangs.” And once after arguing with a Black man on his show the ever amusing Limbaugh quipped, “take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”
No minority group escaped Limbaugh’s classic witticisms. Speaking about the centuries-long holocaust of America’s indigenous peoples, Limbaugh commented, “Holocaust 90 million Indians, only 4 million left. They all have casinos, what’s to complain about?”
A full and complete accounting of Limbaugh’s lies, falsehoods, racism, misogyny, homophobia and naked cruelty would fill a warehouse of books. Former president and narcissistic psychopath in Chief Donald Trump in his 2020 State of the Union address awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medical of Freedom. Trump was thanking Limbaugh for making his damning ascension to the presidency possible. Limbaugh’s decades long bombastic and unrelenting attacks on anything that challenged, questioned or cast light on the realities of white privilege created and nurtured the poisonous political landscape that allowed a rogue criminal demagogue like Donald Trump to obtain power. American democracy may yet survive the unspeakable damage levied by Donald Trump.
What’s important is that none of us forget Rush Limbaugh’s greatest and most enduring achievement of creating and forging the political landscape that made Donald Trump possible.
JIM SAWYER, Edmonds, Wash.
On behalf of all progressives and decent people in the Third Congressional District of Colorado, I would like to apologize to the rest of this great country for sending the supremely unqualified Lauren Boebert to Congress to (mis)represent us. We have the misfortune to be in a gerrymandered district, one where a Democrat has not been competitive since redistricting in 2010. Ms. Boebert seems to be intent on becoming a Fox News personality, with opposition being her only position. She claims to be a proponent of “law and order,” but has a lengthy record of trouble with the law herself. She wants to be the voice of the QAnon cult in the house, but she has a lot of competition in that role. Much attention goes to MTG and lately Matt Gaetz, but we here in western Colorado know she is just as dangerous and nutty as any of them. Our deepest apologies to all decent people, and we promise to do all we can to toss her to the curb in 2022!
KURT THOMPSON, Molina, Colo.
“To me the sea is a continual miracle,” wrote Walt Whitman, and he incisively asked, “What stranger miracles are there?”
The United Nations considers the international seabed to be the common heritage of all humankind, and therefore its exploitation by deep sea mining should be out of bounds. According to Greenpeace, however, numerous contracts have already been made to explore a million square kilometers of international seabed — an area approximately equivalent to France and Germany combined!
Surely, ethics dictate keeping such mining taboo. The propriety of safeguarding the seafloor must outweigh the potential profit of private company owners and beneficiaries.
Greenpeace has proposed a Global Ocean Treaty for the preservation or marine life. Ocean sanctuaries are envisioned for aquatic creatures. So bold and far-sighted a concept merits dialogue.
WILLIAM DAUENHAUER, Willowick, Ohio
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) seems to be virtually alone in venerating the filibuster, a gambit created by racist politicians to frustrate civil rights legislation. He fails to notice that “reaching across the aisle” has also become a relic, thanks to the intransigence of the GOP—but Joe keeps saying “we’ve got to reach across the aisle.”
The Republicons are hell-bent on de-democratizing our government via gerrymandering and a tsunami of voter suppression laws, but apparently Joe hasn’t noticed. Eliminating the filibuster would give the country a solution to this poison by passing HR 1, the For the People Act. Perhaps Joe could consider just one time giving up his demands; it would surely save our democracy.
LEE KNOHL, Evanston Ill.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2021
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