Nation is at a Tipping Point

Re: Kathie Garcia’s Jan. 26 letter, “What will come of impeachment?”:

I found this letter to be thoughtful and critically important. America is poised on a knifepoint, and we will fall either to the side of reinforcing our most basic morals, values and traditions, or plunge into a new state, where the law of the jungle has replaced the rule of law. President Donald Trump’s one-time guru, Steve Bannon, espoused the intention to tear down government, and that sounded preposterous at the time. Not so preposterous now.

The questions posed by Kathie Garcia’s letter can be answered in this way: The future of America, the lives of our citizens and the morality of our society are in our hands. Our form of government demands that we take responsibility for those we elect to represent us. When they reflect our values and beliefs, we re-elect them. When they fail to do so, we must vote them out. Failure to do so, including failure to vote, means we surrender to special interests, political cults and corrupt influences.

We get to vote on the answers to Garcia’s questions. The fate of our nation tips with the results.

Stuart Wing, Moorpark

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Letter to the Editor: A collision course with serfdom

I apologize to David Cooper for having focused on Trump’s distracting behaviors rather than what he is doing behind those distractions.

Trump’s now-departed but still influential political strategist Steve Bannon once stated that his objective was the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” e.g., the Social Security and Medicare programs.

Trump’s other targets include the State Department, where, according to Foreign Policy magazine, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hollowed out and marginalized said department. So too did Tillerson force the departures of State Department employees who were not sufficiently loyal to King Donald, a practice that Mike Pompeo has continued.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen was forced out because, although she was eager to imprison children in cages falsely, she resisted the nativist Trump’s demand to close the US-Mexico border. She also rejected Trump’s desire to fortify his proposed border wall with a water-filled trench complete with snakes and alligators and to shoot the legs of migrants.

Perhaps the most ominous development on the domestic front has been the disempowerment of the EPA, where, amongst many other such things, regulations that once prohibited coal capitalists from dumping their coal slurry into lakes, rivers, and streams have been eviscerated.

The goal of all of this is to create a diminutive government that would be nothing more than an appendage of the capitalist system. Think about it. Have you ever thought that politicians are no longer as effective as they once were and that the government is now powerless to resolve socioeconomic problems?

It is because (real power) now rests in the hands of those who own and control the economy — capitalists and their henchmen who are cannibalizing the political sphere and placing we workers on a collision course with serfdom.

Guy Marsh

Lancaster

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German Lawmaker Reveals How NATO Fooled Gorbachev About Bloc’s Eastward Expansion Plans

In the 30 years since US Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” verbal commitment to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990 not to expand NATO beyond German lands, the alliance has swallowed up every member of the former Warsaw Pact, along with half a dozen former Soviet and Yugoslav republics.
— Read on sputniknews.com/world/202001311078193547-german-lawmaker-reveals-how-nato-fooled-gorbachev-about-blocs-eastward-expansion-plans/