Leftward shift threatens political system

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Leftward shift threatens system

Charles Krauthammer has called Donald Trump’s primary win in Indiana an “ideological earthquake.” He says that the establishment’s explanation that Republicans feel “betrayed” by their party because after having revolted against Obama’s first term of fundamentally transforming traditional American institutions, and having won back control of the House, Senate and re-elected multiple Republican governors, the GOP “failed to deliver.”

Big government was not reined in, massive over-spending continued to run rampant and conservative policies and principles were nowhere to be seen.

However, Krauthammer says this explanation of the earthquake fails to take into consideration why the least conservative candidate of a 17-candidate field devastated far more conservatively acceptable candidates like Ted Cruz.

Krauthammer thinks that the GOP has become a populist party and Trump has been instrumental in this transformation with his no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is, sensitivities-be-damned rhetoric or as Trump himself says of being a conservative — at this point, who cares?

Another explanation of the earthquake should take into consideration two other possibilities. The earthquake may represent the beginning of the end of the two-party political system.

If one looks at the two-party political system bio-socially, liberals and conservatives have always represented attractive opposites. Like male and female, they come together to work out biosocial problems that are essential for the survival and wellbeing of the involved parties. However, when that ability is damaged beyond repair they turn into antagonistic opposites and wind up divorced.

This country became great when men as diverse as John Adams (conservative) and Thomas Jefferson (liberal) could sit down together and work out their differences. This is no longer the case today.

Secondly, the earthquake may represent, as Dr. Charles Konia writes: “a reaction of conservatives to the incessant shift leftward in American politics especially during the Obama Administration.

Originating on the political right, the Trump phenomenon is simply a reaction to this shift to the left. The core truth in the Trump phenomenon is that people are fed up with having the left’s morality of political correctness shoved down their throats and Trump is the one that has led the battle against it.

George Hughes

Burnt Hills

Parties need to focus on issues, not fighting

Is anybody else shocked to read the May 10 paper where we are told that Trump wants to ask the Republican Party for $1.5 billion? Is anybody else shocked that he has already spent $40 million in his primary campaign?

We could feed the 16 million children that go hungry in this country with that money. Just the other day it was mentioned, in The Gazette, that the local shelter in Amsterdam could not get approximately $10,000 it needs to stay afloat. That is here in our little city; can you imagine the need across the country?

We have people supporting one of the richest men in America to run for the most important office in the country, albeit the world, without having any political background. Again the keyword here is rich, wouldn’t you say?

Are you shocked to see that we are more concerned with what bathroom is being used to make us politically correct? Aren’t there bigger problems in this country that deserve the time and money we are spending on as issue like this? When will we wake up?

We have at least six more months of political bashing to put up from both parties. Why is it the issues are never how candidates are going listen to the people they work for? The root of that problem is that both parties fight one another on issues rather than decide whose idea is going to work for United States.

No, we are too busy bashing our president, elected two times by the people, who has less than one year left in office. We are too busy listening to political rhetoric that is non-filtered talk with no understanding or methodology of what to do to correct issues.

We are in a sorry state. My only hope is that we vote with a sense of intelligence for real issues for the person who can tell us how he or she is going to change America’s priorities.

Vincent F. Carelli

Amsterdam

Service organizations help less fortunate

I love it when a plan comes together and similar minds meet. On a recent taping of the Ann Parillo Show, a public access show on Open Stage Media, I met up with a young woman I knew.

Emily Klotz was on the show to speak about the new social action club at the Brown School in Schenectady. The club was formed to involve young students in the life of their community and to see where they might help to make their world better. The students have worked at animal shelters and made cat blankets out of fleece.

At Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Scotia, we initiated a free community lunch program last summer that will continue this summer. While there, people could cut squares to be sewn into small quilts for several local organizations like City Mission and St. Paul’s Shelter in Troy.

Here is where the plan came together. The Brown students finished off the quilts by tying the two parts together. Don’t you love it when things work out so well? Another example of good work being done in our world that seems so bent on creating barriers to cooperation between people, at least according to the media.

Janice Walz

Scotia

Avoiding meat helps humans, planet

As well as making up 51 percent of the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the consumption of meat is bad for the environment in other ways, as well.

On the huge factory farms, the manure waste ends up in big cesspool, which flows into our rivers and aquifers. Over half the total amount of water used in the United States goes to irrigate land used to grow feed for livestock. Enormous quantities are used to wash away manure.

Land used for growing feed for livestock has been severely eroded; four million acres are lost to production yearly, an area the size of Connecticut. This necessitates cutting forestland to replace this acreage. At this rate, we will be out of forests by 2037. Forests are the lungs of the earth, prevent floods, recycle and purify water, and are home to millions of species.

Please, for the sake of our planet, ourselves, and the species we share this planet with, cut down on meat, or give it up altogether.

Jahnn Gibson

Johnstown

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Categories: Letters to the Editor