Respect one another’s political differences
As the country is embroiled in impeachment proceedings it is difficult to remain hopeful regarding our ability to solve that and other seemingly intractable problems.
The current milieu favors argumentation and accusation over reconciliation and understanding and tends to assume that opponents are either dishonest or ignorant. This tendency points to something bigger than our current ideological divide: our unwillingness to acknowledge goodness in others.
What is fueling this downward spiral? Perhaps it is a failure of leadership, news agencies, places of worship or educational institutions.
Worship should emphasize living together in joy, thankfulness and harmony. Joy and thankfulness flow from the acknowledgment that life is a precious gift, and harmony from the belief that it is impossible to love God unless we love others. Our schools and universities, on the other hand, should revive the place of sociology and anthropology, which elucidate important concepts such as paradigm, prejudice, cultural relativism and confirmation bias. Without understanding these concepts, social disintegration reigns because people assume that their perceptions of reality are correct, and thus alternative visions of reality are necessarily false.
Any enlightened society must acknowledge that there are honest, reasonable and informed people on opposite sides of any argument.
Joel Matthews, Concord
Progressive taxes
In “Senate: Restore that deduction” (Editorial, Dec. 27), The Chronicle points out that the House recently voted to remove the $10,000 cap on state and local taxes (SALT). This cap disadvantages taxpayers with significantly higher incomes.
Democrats argue that the use of this cap is a mechanism being used by Republicans to punish Democrats, because wealthier Democrats often live in states that vote Democratic, for instance California. But it seems to me, that this cap is perfectly consistent with the Democratic value of making the wealthy pay their fair share.
Daniel Mauthe, Livermore
As the deficit grows ...
Regarding “Nasdaq tops 9,000 for the first time” (Business, Dec. 27) this is certainly good news for the very wealthy who own stocks. Unemployment is low and economic growth continues the same trend started under the Obama administration.
With all this good news, you would think the U.S. Treasury would be flush with cash to invest in infrastructure, education, health care, and a rainyday fund for the next recession. Unfortunately, corporate tax receipts are down, some multibillion dollar companies paid zero taxes, and the Treasury is hemorrhaging cash to the tune of nearly $1 trillion annually, the result of the GOPs disastrous tax cut. So much for fiscal conservatives.
John Brooks, Fairfax
Addition by division
A mistake those opposed to President Trump keep making is believing that if only his supporters were given the facts they would become nonsupporters.
The truth is that Trump supporters aren’t offended by Trump’s lies and rhetorical excesses, they love them. And the more Trump’s antics vex his nonsupporters, the more energized his supporters become — including his supporters in the leadership of the Republican Party.
Riley VanDyke, San Francisco
Planet in peril
In this coming year, will we finally acquire 2020 vision regarding the climate crisis? Or will we continue being shortsighted? What does it take to shake us out of our complacency?
Olivia Kramer, Oakland
Take a closer look
Regarding “Black riders get bulk of BART’s farecheat tickets” (Page One, Dec. 20): First, an uneven distribution of “fair cheat tickets” does not produce “racial disparity.” It may demonstrate an ethnic difference in the distribution, but there is only one scientifically and biologically defined race of people. It is called the “human race.” The label “race” is incorrect and supportive of the destructive identity politics. Statistics cannot create, they can only demonstrate.
Second, just how incapable of critical thinking do you believe your readers to be? Citing statistics inferring that the uneven distribution of tickets is due to ethnic bigotry without statistics defining the rates of cheating by ethnic groups (not ticket distribution) is meaningless. Why don’t you do that study?
Robert Rissel, San Jose
Dangerous addiction
The rivalry between the United States and Russia is now entering a new level of absurdity and madness. With Russia’s announcement of its new class of hypersonic weapons, U.S. weapons builder Northrop Grumman is already offering to counter this escalation by designing U.S. missile defense systems that operate deep into outer space.
Our endangered human race can not long survive our unquestioning acceptance of this totally necrophilous militarism.
With homelessness, poverty and hunger expanding in even the wealthier nations like the United States and global warming at risk of becoming unstoppable, we humans must awaken from our destructive addiction with war, our fearful submission at the altar of nuclear weapons escalation and our escape from our mechanical and boring lives into a dreamlike love of deathcreating technology.
Much as the late Ram Dass rediscovered true meaning in his life by exchanging LSD for the experience of inner wisdom and peace, the entire humanity must now exchange our foolish trust in weapons of global suicide for the genuine love of ourselves and our unity and cooperation with even our bitterest national rivals.
Rama Kumar, Fairfax