Editor:
Societies hold together through common interests. They collapse through special interests. Working people must democratically manage society and the economy so as to meet human needs rather than generate corporate profits for billionaires. The noblest aspiration of human beings will always be our quest for self-governance through cooperation for the collective political future. The impulse to freedom has always been our most heroic human feature, and our heroes are those who have thus inspired us. If we do not uphold democracy this November, no one will be coming to save us.
A sturdy thirty percent of us are fascist and always have been: those who are okay with dictatorship, okay with racism, okay with denying dignity and rights to poor people and pilgrims, okay with seeing "the other" uprooted and sent to camps, okay with passively watching the land be soaked in poison, the skies and seas turned to open sewers. Fear has rendered them perennially dull-witted.
I will vote as I pray: that the highest expression of human intelligence return us from this pit of corruption to our cornerstone ideals and norms; that concepts such as 'consensus', 'alliance', 'co-operation', 'union', 'deal', 'pact', 'contract', 'negotiation', 'dialogue', 'moderation', 'solidarity', 'rule-of-law', and 'forgiveness' form the core of our ruling parlance; that we replace these warring packs of jackals and hyenas with a Congress who love one another even as they compete, because they love us and revere our sacred Constitution; that our national miracle will be the shift from fear to love.
Tony Baker
Saint Simons Island