A common cause?

by Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, Hamilton

Thank you, Don Lorenzen, for your letter of 1/5/22 addressed to me. 

I would suggest that you stop watching television and start reading things online. Television news has to limit coverage to time available, and anything they think is “juicy” will get the top spot; and regardless of program, anchors are chosen for their looks and delivery, not necessarily for their intelligence or understanding. Consider that Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are apparently the face of the Republican Party these days. Do we really want them governing the country?

You must have access to a computer if you read Heather Cox Richardson. If you want a good summary of what the Biden Administration has achieved in the past year, you might look up her entry for 22 December 2021 (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-22-2021). In fact, you might consider reading her letters on a regular basis. She is an American political historian, after all, and has all kinds of researchers and sources at her beck and call. You may say, “But she’s a Liberal!” I think that’s because she is fascinated by American history, has her eyes open, and has a historical perspective that most of us lack.

I don’t know where you got your statistics on the previous administration because I sure can’t find them confirmed. You might look do a search for “Trump Administration numbers.” What pops up first for me is factcheck.org, “Trump’s final numbers”; the following entries are from https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov, and I’m not sure the statistics there correspond to the ones at factcheck.org or to the statistics cited in the following entries from the BBC, USA Today, and various other sources. That discrepancy suggests that most of the world thinks our former president is a liar. 

I also looked up “fascism,” since neither you nor I wants that. There are endless quibbles about whether fascism is a philosophy or a form of government, so based on Webster’s online and lots of education, I am going to define it as the rule of a dictator who uses ultra-nationalism, racism, and suppression of any opposition to enrich himself, his family, and his friends. Almost 100 years ago the stars were Italy and then Germany; today I would name North Korea, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Syria, Turkey, Hungary, and Poland for starters. Also what our former president wants.

It sounds as if you and I both grew up when a man could get a good job, including health insurance, workman’s comp, and pension, and could afford a family, a house, a car, and maybe even a vacation now and again. He could also help his kids through college and they would work part-time to do their part. That was a different world. There were five kids in my family, too, and all of those things were possible even on a Forest Service salary.

That was a world where, thanks to FDR and the New Deal, wealthy people and corporations paid taxes and there was a “fairness doctrine” that required news broadcasters to present issues from all sides and in as balanced a way as possible. Starting with Reagan and cable tv, I guess, both appropriate taxation and the fairness doctrine bit the dust. If you are a millionaire or billionaire, you are benefitting; if not, you are being conned.