For the editor:
I write this on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day for those of us old enough to remember the events of that Sunday in 1941, a “day of infamy” as FDR proclaimed to Congress and the world. A joint session of Congress unanimously declared war the next day. America had entered World War II and was committed to a position of total war.
Men young and old lined up to sign up and join the fight. “Rosie the Riveter” showed up to build the tanks, planes, ships, and equipment needed to fight a two-ocean war. She learned to drive, work shifts in factories, have her own money, run the home and family, and never looked back. World War II emancipated the American housewife!
I remember everything from Hitler’s prewar tirades on shortwave radio to the frantic announcers on WOR radio announcing the attack and the Japanese army’s first successes in the Pacific: Wake Island, the Philippines and the Aleutian Islands.
I remember arriving at the Unadilla station in New York late at night with my mother and brother in April 1942 when we moved to the farm. Our only companion was a veteran returning home in a simple pine box. I always wished I had talked to him that night and thanked him.
I remember VE Day and VJ Day and honking horns, people screaming and running through the streets. I remember the boys coming home, the war brides and EVERYONE in America coming closer. They got married, built homes, built businesses, started families, and America prospered. We were the envy of the world.
I remember the respect and admiration shown to those who had served and returned and the outstretched hands to help them. What happened ?
I am furious at the acceptance of greed and the motives of American entrepreneurs and big corporations who have sold themselves to the Chinese by investing in China and providing them with OUR technology to use against America. Their greed is reprehensible and treacherous.
I am embarrassed by the way our ancestors are degraded and attacked and their brilliant foresight in creating a better form of governance is forgotten and despised. Our history is taken from us.
The theft and tampering with proven ballots is a direct attack on our representative government and should be resolved in the courts, not in the public arena. I’d rather you steal my car than steal my vote.
I am disgusted and disappointed with our current group of politicians and their “parasites” on both sides of the aisle. What the hell is happening? Politicians and their families openly enrich themselves through foreign deals and twists of diplomatic arms. They should be prosecuted.
I am scared to death of the indoctrination of our children through the education system in socialist values that have never worked elsewhere and have often led to communism and dictatorships. The denial of our history and our ancestors is in the 101 manual of their playbook. Have all our men and women who have sacrificed so much in the many wars died in vain? If so, shame on us.
Future generations are buried under the debts used to pay for the benefits offered today. Much of this debt belongs to China and can be called at any time.
What can we do about it? Pay attention, do our homework. VOTE!
Pay less attention to comics and obituaries (just kidding) and more to real news. Please read about Mussolini and his dictatorship, read about Hitler and the National Socialist Party, read about Greece and its civil war to defeat communism. Read about the Spanish Civil War, (complicated). Read about Cuba, Venezuela and China. They all started with a socialist program and turned into communism and then into dictatorships.
Our press has been compromised, airways too, and TV is only good for weather and entertainment. Read about Bolivia. If you only read fiction, try George Orwell’s 1984. It’s just a story, but given the current situation, it’s a start.
Earle Peterson
Cooperstown