It takes all kinds to run this country. Professors and “deplorables.” Doctors and welders. Administrators and janitors. It is a country of working women; working people of color and working immigrants.
Professors tell us that we have been here before. In 1854, the Republican Party started because southern slaveholders controlled Congress and wanted slavery in the new territories via the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It all culminated in the Civil War.
From 1870 to about 1917, the “robber barons or captains of industry” accumulated their wealth by consuming more than their share of natural resources, they bought government influence, paid poor wages and bought out their competitors to control various markets.
In 1929, unregulated banks loaned people money to buy stock without paying the full price (margin). The little guys panicked and the big guys (Rockefeller, Danforth, Kennedy) shorted the market and made millions.
In former President Hoover’s memoirs, he noted that his Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, aka Mellon Bank, suggested that he “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. ... Enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” The “Mellon Plan” called for debt reduction, tax reduction for businesses and a balanced budget. Sounds a lot like Elon Musk the other day.
In the past 50 years, only two Democrats, Lyndon Johnson in 1969 and Bill Clinton from 1998-2001, had balanced budgets.
So in 2025, we have a convicted felon, someone who openly insults women, hoards classified documents and has multiple bankruptcies to his credit, elected to be our president. It seems that 49.85% of the country has lost its moral compass. Fortunately, not a landslide.
Dan Kuruna,
Middleburg
