So, where is the rage? What statues can we tear down today to protest the murder of 7-year-old Natalia Wallace by selfish morons on North Latrobe this past weekend?
And the murder of 1-year-old Sincere Gaston a week earlier? And the murder of 3-year-old Mekhi James the week before that? And all the teenagers and preschoolers and young adults living innocent lives before being killed in their own neighborhoods by the selfish gun play of complete idiots?
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This insanity has nothing to do with Black lives mattering, racial justice, unemployment or any of the social ills affecting large swaths of our people. It’s a crime spree, simple enough. And it needs the simple application of aggressive police work and citizen cooperation to quell it.
All the liberal hand-wringing in the world won’t solve this brutal crime wave. Hard and fair police work, combined with realistic punishment, can go a long way toward getting these monsters to understand their time has come.
It’s time. We have too many murdered innocents.
Dennis Allen, Wilmette
The game of Monopoly
The wealth gap in the U.S. is wider than it has been in many decades, and increases every day. The political divide is just as wide. The right accuses the left of being too socialistic and the left accuses the right of being too capitalistic. Actually, the U.S. economy has long combined both philosophies. We have some programs that have shared resources, like schooling, police, and armed forces (socialism). And we also have for-profit companies (capitalism).
The game of Monopoly relies on profit and loss, winners and losers (capitalism). Maybe solutions to the wealth gap can be found by modifying the rules. For example, you could forbid the building of hotels, showing what it would look like to cap mass profits. You could also try taxing everyone when they pass “go” five times.
Try adding $50 to the $200 you win when you pass go each time. This will show what raising the minimum wage or having a minimum national income might look like.
We live in a nation that for too long has allowed poverty and greed to flourish. The top 1% have been helped along by all of us, and by a government that refuses to appropriately tax those in this class.
This must change. A modified game of Monopoly could provide a reference for how we move forward and propose changes we can apply in real life — and be fun to try out in the game.
Joseph Diethelm, Brookfield
A father’s request
Stefano Esposito’s heartfelt plea for the use of face masks, in a recent column, was a true and loving plea from a worried father in defense of his children. And he is correct.
In fourth grade, we once asked the teacher “What is freedom?” She answered, ”Freedom is doing what you want to do as long as it hurts no one else.”
Seemingly so many of us have forgotten the second part of that definition.
R.S. Hosek, Streeterville
Statues vs. soldiers
Statues of dead Confederate generals who fought against this country? President Trump is moving swiftly to protect them.
Living American soldiers who are fighting for our country in Afghanistan right now? Protecting them takes more study. The administration has only known about the bounty since February.
Frank Palmer, Edgewater
