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When did we become communist?

I got to thinking that we’re supposed to be the land of the free but it doesn’t feel that way to me.
We have armed troops in our streets, we have masked ice agents arresting people who they think are illegal and putting them in jail or sending them to a prison overseas including very young children, we have people saying that all American citizens should have to carry they’re birth certificates with them at all times to prove that they are American citizens.

To me this doesn’t sound like a free country; it makes me feel like I’m in a communist one.
Then of course we have elected officials who want to rewrite history.  With everything going on I’m afraid of what may come next.
Cecilia Hill
Duluth, Minnesota

Laughs at conservative gaffes

Some on the extreme right make awkward statements that are understandably gaffes made by politicians like Dick Cheney who, when discussing the Vietnam war, once said he “had other priorities than military service.” On the surface this implies that he felt privileged in some way, but at that time we who were in college also had priorities, like moving to Canada, or being pacifists who would not let themselves be ordered to “destroy the village to save it.”

Despite all our military might we saw our future as needlessly sacrificing American lives to benefit Military Hawks, who might be helping their own children escape the draft — something not unique, considering that almost 100 years before Viet Nam those with power and influence did so.
My classmates and I were young and full of life, and we rejected being forced to kill people we knew nothing about, and were not our enemies. Mohamed Ali refused to go, and Mary Todd Lincoln begged her husband to protect their son Todd Lincoln from fighting in the Civil war. But Todd was determined to be a soldier. So, eventually Lincoln let him serve.

All my friends got high draft numbers, however, I got a much lower one and was likely to be drafted. But at the time, an illness that’s plagued me for nearly all my adult life offered the possibility of getting a deferment. So, after being poked and prodded by government physicians in charge of deciding if I was fit enough to kill other men, I was spared. Even though by 1970 almost none of us supported the Vietnam War.

Personally, I would prefer an all voluntarily military, made of individuals who truly support our government’s positions during any given war, and who believe service is their patriotic duty. But support for the Viet Nam war became a boondoggle that dragged on only because Americans had superior weapons and bombs.

As for who truly represents the middle class, I have thought at times, that people earning more than $59,000/year represent a demarcation line. But when the right wing kept promising to reduce taxes on the middle-class, I had little doubt that the income defining the middle-class would be set much higher, i.e. by some at $300,000/year. However, eventually Rep Frederick Heineman of NC said it should begin as high $700,000/yr — an absurd amount that made my friends and I slap our knees with laughter. 

When I was 18, I earned about $12/day. And today the middle class will only see their overall expenses rise due to Trump’s Big Beautiful Bulshit deal!
GW Bush said, “I know how hard it is to put food on your family” — trailing off before the word “table,” and some of us have made similar gaffes. CW also claimed to” understand small business growth because he was one,” another gaffe that drew titters from the children’s table. But haven’t we all made similar gaffes when using the wrong words in similar ways?

One thing GW deserves credit for was his affirmation that America’s peace-loving Muslims were not to blame for terrorism, and that we were really at war with terrorists.
However, I have no respect for demagogues like Rush Limbaugh who (on his radio show) once ranted about some women asking him to apologize after farting in an airtight car — Wow! What an Earth-shaking example of persecution at the hands of “feminazis” who had the gall to complain about his farts.
Although Dan Quayle came across as, “plastic” he did do something that I and many others have done. He spelled potato with an “e” at the end.
About the idea that it’s illegal to pray — anyone has the right to pray anywhere in private or to themselves, but, (according to Terry Randal, founder of Operation Rescue) “We are Called by God to Conquer this country,” While Pat Robertson said “We are supposed to be be nice to the Episcopalians, The Presbyterians, the Methodists, and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense! I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the spirit of the Antichrist.” But our public schools are against organized religious groups who (force) or entice students on school grounds to accept their ideas about God — understand the difference?

One other thing that is paramount for some Fundamentalist Christians is that, “If their wives don’t understand what their ministers said, then its their husband’s duty to explain it to them”-- spoken by St Paul, but really is irrelevant to anyone with a brain, (like the supposedly ignorant women who are vital parts of any Christian Church).
Peter W. Johnson
Superior, Wisconsin