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Donald Trump wins. I point angry fingers. The corporate-controlled Democratic Party, lurching rightward since Bill Clinton, has become the enemy of working people and of progressive ideals. Rustbelt “deplorables” may lack Ivy League degrees, but they are not stupid. They know when they are getting a bad deal. And that’s what the Democratic Party has given them for decades.
In addition to toxic trade deals, corporate Democrats have provided trillions of dollars to the military-industrial complex, endless war, a shredded social safety net, mass incarceration, school-loan enslavement, Obamacare billions to health insurance companies, and spineless climate change policies to benefit fossil fuel donors.
Establishment Republicans are worse. After decades of dog-whistle racist language to get whites to vote against their own economic interests, an angry movement has emerged which Country Club Republicans can no longer control. It may destroy their Grand Old Party.
The mass media, intoxicated by profits from the nonstop Trump extravaganza, ignored critical analysis in favor of spectacle, giving Trump billions in free coverage, while mocking him. Ironically, Trump threatens a media crackdown, proving Karl Marx right in saying that capitalists will sell you the rope you use to hang them.
We need a coalition of conservative populists and progressives to destroy the Democratic/Republican establishment and create a system that serves ordinary people, as Ralph Nader suggests in his book, endorsed by conservative Grover Norquist, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. Despite glaring differences, common ground exists on infrastructure jobs, free trade agreements, protecting Social Security, avoiding unnecessary wars and foreign entanglements, ending corporate welfare, and many other issues.
George Ochsenfeld, Monee
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Dumbing down of America
President-Elect Donald J. Trump. The job of talk radio and television is done. The dumbing-down of America is complete.
Walter R. Kowalczyk, Jefferson Park
Dems learn the lesson of Palin
Eight years ago, Democrats gleefully said Sen. John McCain could not win the presidency because he choose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. How obvious is it now that the Democrats didn’t win because they nominated Hillary Clinton? As Honest Abe said, “you can fool some of the people some of the time…”
Stuart Rudy Wheeling.
