News & Articles

Trump’s worst legacy

We have read many letters and observed much hand-wringing about what Donald Trump has done, is doing, or might do to those non-billionaires among us dealing with his next 4 years in office. None of these astute observations require an advanced degree in rocket science. They are—or should be—painfully obvious to even the most casual observer.

Assuming we survive Trump’s combination of ignorance and arrogance, then what? I fear; indeed, I predict, that an important learning opportunity will be lost and voters will return the accommodating malleable Democrats to office, much to the relief of the billionaire class.
The evidence of Democrat duplicity is overwhelming. The Biden-Blinken loyalty to Israel-Netanyahu and the Ukraine proxy war illustrate their faith in militarism and empire over internationalism. Their loyalty to the current health care system is symbolic of their bowing to top-down corporate power. Identity politics with its laudable goals cannot substitute for class struggle to bring about radical change in basic power structures.

Trump is nothing new. His ideological predecessor, Ronald Reagan, harped constantly on how “government is the problem.” Democrats are interested in taking us back to their comfort zone of being the established intermediaries between the super-rich and the rest of us. They want to use fear of Trump to accomplish their short-term self-serving ends--re-election. But where are the leaders to take us forward? In short, Democrats lack a real alternative vision as well as the courage to get us there.

Trump is a despicable liar and an ignorant fool. But he has one talent, and that is his ability to touch the sore spots of lower middle-class and working-class people and use their pain to the advantage of his billionaire friends. Sadly, his legacy will likely be to drive the have-nots back into the welcoming arms of Democrats, the other half of the ruling duopoly, who will give us nothing but tinkering and talk.

There are still almost 4 years left to build a real alternative. There is no time to lose.
 Robert Kosuth
Duluth, Minnesota

The unconscionable Trump

In one of Donald Trump’s first acts in office, he stripped away protections for schools, hospitals, and places of worship from immigration enforcement. These were once safe spaces where people could learn, receive health care, and pray without fear. Now they have been turned into targets for ICE raids.

This is unconscionable. As the world’s largest historical climate polluter, the United States has a responsibility to immigrants. Our pollution is causing the climate chaos — droughts, floods, hurricanes, rising waters — that is forcing people in Latin America, Asia, Africa and elsewhere to leave their homes. Others are fleeing violence, poverty, and hunger — all of which are caused or made worse by the climate crisis.

People have the right to be able to leave their homes and migrate with dignity to find safe haven. But right now, immigrant families are facing the unimaginable: the fear that seeking education or health care could mean deportation, or that a peaceful moment of prayer might be shattered by ICE agents barging in.

As municipal leaders, mayors have the power to fight this. They can protect immigrant families by ordering police not to participate in ICE raids and even to block ICE agents’ entry into schools, hospitals, and places of worship.
The future of so many families in our communities is on the line. We must call on local leaders to do the right thing, even as the federal government does not. I’m writing to urge mayors to hear this call and take action to protect immigrants.
Wendy Scribner