Sanders offers hope
A recent Observer-Reporter opinion piece listing conservative principles by a local Republican public servant vilified European socialism. American socialism is under attack by Republicans. Social Security recipients, Medicare and Medicaid patients, public education, the environment, the poor, even government itself, where Republicans now control the presidency, Congress, the Supreme Court, and many state and local governments, are all on their hit list.
Why? Republican principles! American socialist principles begin with Native American history, find voice in the Declaration of Independence and Eleanor Roosevelt’s United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and are embodied in the U.S. Constitution’s secular federal government serving the public interest.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is the most popular and effective American socialist in history. We are fortunate to have him at this crucial time in human affairs. Sanders offers hope, along with bills to extend Medicare to all, combat climate change, rein in capitalists like President Trump, and promote democracy, the only way any of these goals can be achieved.
Irrational laws warring on drugs instead of the conditions that make people want or need them are one example of fascist America. Republican and Democrat principles are in accord in taxing the far more lethal use of tobacco and alcohol, while criminalizing and demonizing opioid addicts who cannot afford the outrageous prices charged by the pharmaceutical industry. Both capitalist parties collude in a war on poor people.
The Democratic establishment won a pyrrhic victory over Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary and is not anxious to shift some of the tax burden from gamers, drug addicts, the old, the sick, and the poor to the wealthy funders of election campaigns.
An opinion piece by Paul Krugman that appeared in the Observer-Reporter, “Moral and intellectual collapse of GOP has been happening for decades,” correctly finds Republican hypocrisy more blatant and reprehensible than Democratic “cutting of a few intellectual corners,” but both parties lag far behind the integrity and agenda Sanders offers.
Jim Greenwood
Washington