Editor, Times-Union:

Finally, Congress is proposing laws to ease American families’ distress. Someone is finally addressing the “kitchen table” issues that keep millions of ordinary people awake at night: the meaning of M&M colors, human litter boxes in schools, the imminent fate of gas stoves, the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, the true origination of covid 19, and whether or not anyone heard them say the word “gay” or saw them reading a book that might have included any history regarding people of color.

Now if we can just keep these good-hearted, brilliant problem solvers in office long enough, we will all — each and every one of us, regardless of anything — be able to carry a lethal weapon in public whenever and wherever we want. We will be able to eliminate in one way or another anybody who does not look like us, worship like us, talk like us, or love like us. Maybe in my grandkids’ lifetime we will finally have a country inhabited and led by straight, dominating white male believers of the same ideology and theology.

After all, is it not much easier to co-exist when everybody is “on the same page?” Will it not be more comfortable to know that no one is trying to “groom” or brainwash, or indoctrinate us with complicated thoughts of equality, freedom, transparency and individuality? It will be so much simpler to just accept whatever dictatorial edicts our self-appointed leaders bestow upon us … to think only about those things we are instructed to think about … to read only those things approved by an all-knowing leader … to never have to seek answers to questions we are forbidden to ask.

Ah, yes, some of us may actually live long enough to recollect vague memories of something called democracy, and regret that we did not cherish and protect the concept when we had it … that we did not fight hard enough to keep it … that we did not speak out when our freedoms and human rights were stripped from us one by one. But then that would have meant getting up off our barcaloungers. It would have meant standing up to the ignorant rantings of people we once thought of as friends. It would have required risking our jobs, our family connections, our well-hidden thoughts of anger all cloaked in cowardice. Yeah, coulda, woulda, shoulda.

It would have been tiring shouting out the truth day after day after day. Giving up, giving in, and burying our heads in the sand was so much easier, wasn’t it?

Isn’t it??

Jeanne Schutz

Winona Lake, via email