To the Editor:
Thomas Paine wrote this in his The Rights of Man (1791): 'From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has arisen not to be extinguished.' He was talking about democracy, our revolution. It's quoted at the beginning of Ken Burns' documentary, The American Revolution.
Mr. Burns said in a recent interview, 'Everybody up to that point had been under authoritarian rule, had been a subject. It was in the interests of their rulers that they be uneducated, that they be superstitious, that they be distracted by conspiracies.
And then suddenly you had something new,” Burns said.
'And they were creating a new thing: citizens.'
We're currently trending authoritarian in this country. We have a president who is ignoring the law, doing what he wants. He's supported by a rich ruling class; that would be our senators, representatives, the wealthy of business, technology, and heredity, the billionaires advising the president.
I recently looked at information available about how wealthy our senators and representatives are. Half the members of Congress are millionaires, many multi-millionaires. Certainly, there are many considered middle-class, maybe upper middle class, and who are there to genuinely serve the people they represent, or think they are.
But how can these multi-millionaires know what it takes to live a middle or working-class life, to work a job because you must, maybe two jobs? How can they relate to those working for a living, working for a paycheck? How many of them know what a gallon of milk costs, a pound of hamburger? Yet they’re the ones deciding how much food aid to give to people in need, how much to support those who need health care, how much to fund Social Security and Medicare. For those of us trying to find our way in our current economy; it seems like we’re overlooked.
Our country is very divided now, people on all sides are troubled. The economy is scary, AI is scary—it’s likely to take jobs. I got my insurance update last week.
They added a new clause.
They now will not pay in cases of damage caused by “civil war or rebellion.”
Really, this is needed?
But I want to point out that despite our differences; we have more in common with each other than not.
We all want safe communities, want to support our families, want to find love, want to participate in our communities—to build our communities.
Let’s not allow the distractions and omissions of media and news take away our understanding that, for those of us in the working or middle class, those who work for a paycheck, we’re in this together, all of us, red, blue, those in between. Let’s remind our representatives that they work for us, or elect new ones who do understand.
Benjamin Franklin once said, when asked what kind of government the delegates had created at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, “It’s a republic, if you can keep it,” he said.
And here we are, trying to keep it.
Richard Chamberlain - Colchester
