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You say "No wonder it looks -- to so much of the rest of the world -- that the United States is in a headlong dive toward becoming the Fourth Reich." This is also a fear for so many of us. I was born in 1943, and remember that when I was growing up, my parents stressed the importance of education. We were fairly poor, so for me, the only girl, to be able to go to college was just not considered possible. I married in my teens, and had children, but always remembered that there was nothing keeping me from educating myself. My mother, especially, always told me that I had an obligation to do for myself what the family could not do for me.
I read, and devoured books, newspapers, magazines, anything I could to become knowledgeable about what was going on in the world. Even back then, many Christians realized that the Bible was not to be taken literally, but rather as a collection of fragments of history, metaphors, and lessons in love and charity. We have been going backwards ever since. People are much more conservative now, it seems to me, because once, we were proud of our scientific knowledge, of our scientists, of our innovators, and we all wanted to lead the world in progress.
Now, we seem to want to dominate the world, to take oil, for example, by force, because we lack the will or discipline to seek alternative solutions. Alternative solutions would require that we nurture, and educate, our population in the various scientific fields, and too often that is brushed aside because of the fundamentalist Christian interference in education. Since our politicians are too beholden to corporate interests to pass legislation geared toward helping the common citizen, we end up with a nation of people who are struggling so hard just to make ends meet, that higher education is more and more out of the reach of ordinary citizens.
What is happening in this country is indeed tragic, and I am often glad that I will not live to see the worst, which will surely come unless Democrats and somehow take control of Congress back, and move much more to the left in order to put a little bit of balance back in American life. What I will live to see will be bad enough, unless enough people realize how much danger the country is in, and come to their senses.
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