I always look forward to reading Hal Cowther’s columns but I am afraid I must push back a little with his latest Nov. 15 column, “Without Shame or Restraint: Republicans Sink to New Depths,” in which he calls Republicans misguided and willfully misinformed! I guess I would argue you can’t be misguided if you willfully do not wish to see or listen to truth or the facts.
Trumpers remind me of those Germans who willfully looked the other way at atrocities. How many Trumpers watched the Jan. 6 Congressional hearings? Out of sight, out of mind. Gee if they don’t watch maybe it didn’t happen.
The facts are, most Republicans willfully embrace Trump, they willfully like his crudeness, they willfully accept his bald-faced lies, they willfully like his racist innuendoes, they willlfully accept the outright fascism that occurred at the Jan 6th insurrection that they willfully described as a “legitimate political discourse”.
I have absolutely no patience for authoritarian individuals, whether religious or secular. Trump tried to steal my vote, period, and quite frankly apparently his supporters just don’t give a damn.
So, consequently, I have absolutely no trouble describing the Jan. 6 insurrection a fascist attempt to overthrow our political process.
LARRY GINTER, Rhodes, Iowa
I hate how Ted Rall [“Sometimes what a Van Gogh needs is a splash of tomato soup,” 11/15/22 TPP] refers to “Liberals” like we all agree on everything or anything for that matter. I take umbrage when he says “ Liberals, who claim to care deeply about climate change” ...
Most care deeply damnit! And what really irks me is that I agree with him so much that the environment isn’t an emergency, but it is THE emergency that dwarfs everything else. Climate change is the only important thing and it should have 100% of all our attention. I leave you with this, reported in Harper’s Magazine,
RAINWATER IS NOW UNSAFE TO DRINK ANYWHERE ON EARTH.
ROBERT PITTACK, Caldwell, Idaho
Re: “Death of Mahsa Amini must continue to matter outside of Iran,” by Mary Sanchez (11/1/22 TPP)
Let’s look at A bit of history concerning the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian woman who was murdered by her country’s “morality police:”
Mahsa would be alive today if in 1953 the US hadn’t overthrown Iran’s duly elected leader. Muhammad Mosaddegh. who planned to nationalize his country’s oil production to benefit Iran, instead of America’s oil corporations. His goal included modernizing Iran in the mold of a progressive Western nation.
Our government replaced him with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as Shah (“King”) of Iran. He was a tall, slender, handsome man who truly resembled a fairy story king. And although he pleased America’s oil corporations, he turned out to be an evil, sadistic dictator who brought a reign of terror to Iran — until he was overthrown in the revolution of 1979 by its leader, the Shiite cleric Ruhollah Khomeini, who established a fundamentalist Islamic republic and suppressed all Western influence.
Doesn’t this historical summary reveal that our government’s interference in Iran’s internal affairs was as much responsible for Mahsa Amini’s death as was the tyrannical theocracy which actually killed her?
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, Calif.
Our nation/world has historically, throughout the annals of time, been “dummied down” to the point of”stupidity.” The Middle Ages are full of mythological figures depicted as fearfulness, saviors and goodness, for which each created idol/figure has an intended purpose that was beneficial to its “stupidifiers/originator’s needs/intent. From our “flat Earthers,” pied pipers, medicine men of our colonial era “hawking their cure all concoctions” to the gullible and “stupidified” was a replication of the pasts despicable reprobates.
The fact pertaining to history repeating itself is, has, and assuredly shall continue to be as long as despicable characters like “stupidifying con men” like the Alex Joneses, Roger Stones, Jim Joneses, David Koreshes and Donald Trumps of the world are but a small example of today’s (2022) con men and purveyors of “pet rock” fantasies and QAnon B.S. that lacks a single element of proven truth, facts or impericle evidence, to substantiate all the lies.
Our societal “nano second abilities” of communications has exacerbated our nations threats and violence in not being expeditiously confrontational in exposing all of its “stupidifiers and stupefied” with facts and empirical evidence that defies and negates the lies that are being told nationwide for intent and purpose of divide and conquer to denigrate, subjugate via authoritarian fascist, dictatorial “power and control” governance. Our nation’s reversion to “tribalistic instincts” of violence has been demonstrated almost on a daily basis and requires forceful emphatic actions to counter our societal reprobates immediately or rue the forthcoming purported turmoil and violence predicated.
FRANK C. ROHRIG, Milford, Conn.
From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2022
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