Letters

Just for the record, Tom Neely, I’ll leave the whining to you [“Let’s Discuss,” Letters, February 27]. I’ll even agree with you on a few points. I’m not embarrassed to say we can be and do better as a nation. Our national debt, the cost of health care and medication, maybe the unseemly amount of money it takes to run for office these days come to mind.

I’m not surprised that the point I made regarding Rush Limbaugh and the awakening of the Conservative base struck a nerve. Limbaugh is an acquired taste. Unless you listen often enough, you will not get his point of view and delivery. His partisanship, if it upsets you, can easily be turned off.

Not so with partisanship in government. Democrats are guilty of the politics of personal destruction. If you don’t play by their rules, you will be personally assaulted and publicly flogged by their accomplices in the national media.

I’ve watched, since the 1980s, the public discourse grow uglier every election cycle. The tarring of Republicans as racist was just the beginning. The legitimate debate over the definition of marriage led to accusations of homophobia. The debate over the rights of the unborn led to charges by women that their reproductive rights were being threatened. The demagoguery by pundits in painting thoughtful people as less worthy than themselves has divided our country deeply.

In the pursuit of power, Democrats lost their way. I saw honest differences characterized as illegitimate, to protect an agenda that eventually gave the voters of this nation heartburn. The Populist revolution that vomited up Donald Trump was the result of the political avarice of today’s Democrat Party.

It is telling that they still don’t accept the how and why Trump is still so popular. Instead, Democrats are running more extreme candidates than ever before. It is my belief that until Democrats become more mainstream, they will be unable to regain the confidence of the majority of Americans.

I hope that distorting gender identification, unrestricted and unregulated immigration, environmental policy that discriminates against the United States, a socialist reconstruction of the economy, and a complete takeover of the health care industry, and the need to perpetuate the racist platform for the unequal status of all minorities who are citizens, will never be mainstream thinking while I still breathe.

To my moderate Liberal friends, I extend my hand in friendship and my reasoned voice in honest debate.

Ed Surgan

Westhampton