To the Editor:
Our country is adrift with no rudder. You would hope that the leader of our country would be the one guiding us through these rough waters, but as you an readily see that is not happening. It is being left up to the governors and mayors to scramble fort the needed materials, labor, and equipment to get us through this major health crisis. No leadership from Washington is on the horizon.
Because this impeached president is only focused on himself and getting re-elected, all systems and agencies of our government are in chaos or shutdown mode. The very essence and root of our democracy is at stake because of the actions of an inept, racist, and incompetent socio-path. Let's take a real close look at what is now happening during his current crisis.
Why do you think the National Defense Production Act has not been fully invoked to procure the PPE, testing tools and ventilators to protect our country? Besides the reasons stated by the White House, the only thing I can see is that it is a deliberate attack on African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, immigrants, the prison population, VA hospitals a nursing homes. In other words, it's a genocidal attack on all fronts of our society. If the guns don' kill African-Americans (on a daily basis) and the Republicans can't fully suppress their voting power, then let's just let Covid-19 do its covert work. We are now all labeled "warriors" against this virus because he has done little or nothing to protect us from this deadly disease.
Upton Sinclair vividly wrote about the deplorable working conditions in the Chicago meat processing plants in the early 1900s in his book The Jungle. Again, it was the minorities of the time that had to work in these crowded unsanitary factories, working for low wages and no benefits. It wasn't until the unions organized the workers that that they began to receive a livable wage and benefits. Where are the union leaders today to protect these workers from the plant owners and our government? Now, the so-called "leader" signs an executive order requiring all meat processing plants to remain open even if the workers (mostly immigrants) are sick and dying of Covid-19. Then to rub salt in the wound, the companies are exempt of any liability if workers get sick or die. It's deja vu all over again.
I have done my fair share of expressing my outrage and protest of actions or inactions of our state and federal government by marching, writing letters to government officials and newspapers and signing petitions. Now that most of us are sequestered, how can we further express our discontent? On a daily basis I contact the White House at info@mail.whitehouse.gov to let the impeached president know of my outrage and what he is doing to our country. I mince no words and so far no one has pulled up in my driveway and hauled me off to prison. As Henry David Thoreau stated in Civil Disobedience, "How does it become a man to behave towards this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it." I hope that all of you, Republican and Democrat, will stand up and be counted in November and remove this cancer from our government once and for all, otherwise, our democracy will wither on the vine and we'll become a dictatorship.
John Hahn
Shohola, Pa.