A simple act of optimism
There were a lot of optimists in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Optimistic people vote. If you voted, you were saying you believe that something better is possible. We’ve all been disappointed by our choices in the past, but when it really matters we seem to get it right. Think Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. All were elected during times when fear hung thick, but all inspired us to be better than we thought we could be.
Elections are new beginnings — a stake in the ground for optimism, like the first day of spring or opening day of a baseball season.
Connie Flanagan, associate dean in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin, has seen it on the Madison campus. With new voter ID requirements, there was an urgency to get students registered.
“The ‘get out the Badger vote’ thing was this message that democracy means you have to do something,” she said. “There was really a sense of agency in the message, and a lot of it was really around how to do it. You can’t just assume you can go.
She continued: “If anybody has to be aspirational, it’s them. There is this sense of government turning its back on people. On the left and the right, you’re hearing that.”
Campaigns in the United States always have been messy and raucous, at times even ugly. We shouldn’t get too worried about this. We’ve survived it in the past.
There has been ugliness this year — fistfights at a Donald Trump rally in Chicago, and a teenage girl was pepper sprayed at one of his rallies in Janesville. A racist group robocalled voters in Wisconsin on behalf of white supremacists. But it’s nothing new. During the election of 1800, a newspaper wrote that “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes” should Thomas Jefferson become president. Jefferson won.
During the campaign of 1828, Andrew Jackson, a general and war hero, was accused of being a cannibal — “the blood thirsty Jackson began again to show his cannibal propensities,” one handbill proclaimed. Jackson also won.
Our politics, and the campaigns that animate them, are, after all, a reflection of us. We are a fighting, ugly people at times. But we’re also a gracious, fair-minded people. We shout. We fight. We fight some more. Usually, we apologize.
And then we choose. And usually, we choose pretty well.
For all of the blood sport and ugliness that is American politics, there is beneath it all a hope: that a democracy that has worked so well for more than 200 years will keep on working.
Thousands of people in Wisconsin did something on Tuesday that oppressed people around the world can only dream about. They told their government what to do.
That’s optimism.
David D. Haynes is editorial page editor for the Journal Sentinel. Email dhaynes@jrn.com Twitter: @DavidDHaynes
Let the river flow
With the Department of Natural Resources soliciting public comment on the environmental impacts of repairing the Estabrook Dam until Wednesday, the Milwaukee County Board’s decision to repair the dam on the Milwaukee River is once again under public scrutiny, and rightly so.
After almost a decade of debate, the majority of Milwaukee County residents are still asking the County Board and the DNR to remove the Estabrook Dam. The number of voices calling for removal reflects a growing movement in our community to value the health of the Milwaukee River — one of our most vital natural resources — and to make it more accessible for all.
Rivers have the power to revitalize an entire community because rivers do not discriminate. Dams, however, often do. Dams restrict rivers, and with them, a community’s access to all of the benefits a river provides. Across the nation, communities are realizing this. Dams are being removed, and these decisions demonstrate how investing in our natural resources means investing in the whole of our communities.
It is past the time that those charged with making this decision listen to our Milwaukee community. Remove the Estabrook Dam, and let the Milwaukee River flow free. Lynde B. Uihlein
Milwaukee
Not the whole picture on trade
The March 27 Journal Sentinel Crossroads package “Trade: free, fair or both” did not present the entire picture of the trade debate. The top half of the page was devoted to the impressive-looking figures on goods exported from Wisconsin. But the other side of the trade coin known as imports was totally ignored.
There was no mention of any figures on how much is imported into Wisconsin. That’s like saying the Green Bay Packers had a great game because of some nice statistics while not mentioning that they lost, 40-10.
In his commentary, Dennis Slater listed isolated instances in which Wisconsin businesses gained from exports along with agricultural “cash receipts” of $172 million. But he ignores the fact that every single day in America over $1 billion (that’s 1,000 millions) go sailing off to foreign nations, never to return via our trade imbalance.
This has been going on for decades, and Slater should have told us how long he thinks this can continue before it sinks our nation's economy.
Edward Creamean Sr.
Pewaukee
Algebra matters
With U.S. high school students continuing to lag far behind many of their peers in other industrialized nations, the absolute last thing we need to be doing is dropping algebra from our high school curricula! (“(y-3)2=what? Author calls algebra unnecessary stumbling block”).
As the fundamental and common language of the physical sciences and engineering, a basic working command of mathematics is an essential prerequisite for any type of career in engineering or these sciences. More important, and applicable to all students regardless of their eventual career choice, are the expanded thinking skills that come from just working at and trying to understand mathematical concepts and principles.
In this regard it is in the struggle, in the study of math, in doing the seemingly mindless “mental pushups” that we develop new and logical thinking skills, an ability to visualize problems and relationships, to learn how to teach ourselves new things.
Rather than scrap algebra just because it may be a stumbling block, let’s find out why our students are stumbling and then work to remove the block — not the math.
Larry Fennigkoh, Ph.D., P.E. Professor, Biomedical Engineering Milwaukee School of Engineering
EECS Dept. Milwaukee