Dear Editor,
While I sat for a moment in my car before beginning my routine shopping, I reflected on what a neighbor had just said to me that she “doesn’t vote” in primary elections. I was baffled. Especially when she said “It doesn’t matter that much” yet in the same breath she tells me her lovable dog she adopted to keep her company during COVID has become more costly to care for with the price of everything going up. But then I got pulled out of the befuddled thought when I noticed a sweet – bipartisan – sign on a truck that read, ‘My goal in life is to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.’
Then with a smile I though how nice it would be if we all could be as simplistic as one’s dog – God spelled backwards – man’s best friend but unfortunately, we’re only human without frailties and problems We’re living in a time four out of five Americans can’t afford their lives and in my neighbor’s case not even her pets.
Republicans have had control of the White House, the Senate and Congress and we’re no better off than we were before and much worse. They get us into tariffs and a war that’s caused the cost of everything to go up and they voted for the Big Beautiful Bill that kicked tens of thousands off their health insurance and supported DOGE that shuttered agencies that provided programs that better the lives of millions. While they spend our tax money and energy crating senseless wars killing innocent people and our military soldiers and going after hardworking immigrants fighting tooth and nail to end birthright citizenship. While immigrants and birthright citizens serve I our military and a young man of color – birthright citizen – team U.S. MNT’s star Bologrun with his other team players a second generation of immigrants represent our country for being the best of the best.
Yet Ice pulls immigrants from our factories and farms – willing to work jobs most don’t want – that keep the cost of living down and handcuffs and arrests a community’s beloved nun (of color) and warehouse children and babies (of color) and arrest citizens who protest it. Even a U.S. Olympian was arrested just for touching apiece of rubber floating on what was once a reflecting pool now a swamp. And then there’s wanting to police pregnant women visiting the U.S. that’s just creepy and so wrong on a multitude of levels.
As is everything else going wrong in our country today with our constitutional rights and democracy feeling under threat. All the more it is to the contrary to what my neighbor thinks. Primary elections are no less important.
J.M.
