Old ‘team spirit’ needed
Dear editor:
Sad that the first Sunday issue of the New Year had two extremely negative letters and nothing positive in either one. Barry White suggests in his missive that our country is “going to the dogs” in politics, government, economy and education. Mrs. Robinson, in her usual style of garbled, unrelated items, sounds her usual megaphone lauding Trumpism.
In spite of the pandemic, 2021 saw many improvements in several areas. Unemployment figures are the lowest in years. Until the omicron variant appeared very late in the year, most regular restaurants had reopened with full service, grocery shelves were much fuller, scarcity of some items had lessened, and live social activities had increased, with retirement centers, nursing homes and government buildings welcoming visitors. It was an A-plus year compared with 2020.
Of course, Mrs. Robinson’s adoration of Mr. Trump will never die, even with all his failures to show a “win” in 2020 and with all his many court failures this year. Die-hard fans that strongly suggest a “cult” movement around their failed hero will simply not give up, though the various conspiracies that their hero promoted have proved totally false. Such tripe is kept alive by a few ultra-right-wing congressional representatives and senators, Ms. Greene being the absolute worst non-thinker among them.
Now we are about to have a former Trump spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee, elected governor. As Rex Nelson, regular columnist and former co-worker of Sarah’s dad, former Gov. Huckabee, wrote in his Jan. 2 column, if she is smart “she will treat 2022 as a graduate seminar, learning as much about Arkansas, its history and its people as she can … if the social media culture wars continue, it will prove that her interest is in making money and playing the national political game.” Rex also suggested that 2022 would be better in Arkansas politically if Arkansas voters “say they’ve had enough of the Know Nothings in the Legislature, those loudmouthed members who play to the social media mob.”
Mr. Nelson has been in journalism and politics all his adult life and remains a true thinking conservative, presenting facts from thorough research to support his ideas. If only our state Legislature could have more like him elected, we might get back to being purple rather than red or blue. I have lived through both the latter, and history proves that when there is no sitting down sharing ideas through discussion, resulting in compromise, many unfortunate things occur, which only time takes care of.
In the meantime, we all suffer from those putting their own self-interests ahead of the general population, and the old team spirit of “one for all and all for one” dies. John W. “Doc” Crawford
Hot Springs