To The Editor:
Authoritarian, COVID, economic, climate change! Socialism, low-income housing with people of color coming to your neighborhood! Is there a correlation between obnoxiously loud motorcycles, trucks with exhaust pipes the size of your head proudly spewing black smoke into the air and refusing to wear masks? Free dumb is tricky tricky stuff.
There are still plenty out there who believe the pandemic is dreamed up by socialists to help annul the Bill of Rights. But fortunately, Mitch McConnell stuffed SCOTUS with “originalists” who interpret the Constitution as if Moses brought it down from Mount Sinai on tablets of stone.
Blue collar workers voting for the tough talking, draft dodging carnival barker in the White House despite being against their best interests. A distorted sense of masculinity, rooted in disenfranchisement and powerlessness of the working class. Same people who need unions and affordable health care, duped by their need to feel manly or powerful.
My father fought in World War II against thugs like Trump yet, unfortunately, he wasn’t aware before he died that patriarchy is a brain-dead dinosaur with its tail swinging wildly, still doing damage in its last gasps.
It’s all happening against the backdrop of ecological and climate collapse, fueling a rise of ethnic nationalism and reactionary politics around the globe, which is being fueled by mass migrations precipitated by the crisis.
The world is indeed falling apart and the right wing’s authoritarianism is an attractive response to a frightened and divided public. History is repeating itself again and again and again.
Michael Levengood
Warren.
