Not beautiful America

I would encourage your readers to look up David Sixbey’s letter to the editor on Aug. 5. It is a succinct, insightful, erudite, well-written summary of the tumultuous political events of the last two years.

He ends his letter saying, “We face a hard choice: Preserve the past and remain the same, or address the future and become something different. The rest of the world is moving on.”

Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration in Washington are upfront about what they want us to become. It seems they envision a United States dominated by very wealthy, conservative white males bent on accumulating more wealth and power, supported by a new tax law overwhelmingly favoring the rich, enabled by a compliant Supreme Court, and abetted by evangelical Christians aspiring to be their unofficial, exclusive state church. Their domestic policy opposes cultural diversity, religious tolerance, gender and race equality, and imposes protectionist tariffs in place of modernization and globalization. Their nationalistic, isolationist foreign policy rejects America’s historic embrace of immigrants fleeing oppression and abandons America’s place as the leader of the free world.

Indeed, we do face some “hard choices.” However, that vision of the current regime is not us. It is ugly. It is not America the beautiful. GEORGE BENJAMIN

Siloam Springs