Watching China excel

America’s role?

Regarding “Trump’s ideas will help make China great again” (Page A17, Wednesday), Thomas Friedman’s column shows it’s no longer necessary for an enemy to bomb us back into the Stone Age.

We’re doing it to ourselves with shortsighted policies, subterfuges, lack of integrity and outright lies about what’s going on. Our country has become so polarized, partly due to political gerrymandering, that the losers in all of what’s happening are the American people. Worse, it’s our children and grandchildren who will suffer the most. The polarization isn’t only politics; it’s the haves and have-nots.

In the meantime, our legislatures, both federal and Texas, bicker about what the other is saying and doing and not what’s best for our country and its citizens. They espouse causes that are mainly politically and religiously motivated, spending what precious little time they have on nonsensical pandering to their political bases and not nearly enough time on real issues.

One thing I don’t understand is why with all of the discontent in this country with our legislators, we continue to elect the same people with the same prejudices and agendas and greed and special interests? We may have a government of the people and by the people, but it sure as heck is not a government for the people. Len Kaplan, Houston