The height of hypocrisy is a candidate who says he will refuse corporate money but does not denounce the ugly negative mail paid by his mega million dollar backers. I dislike all the negative campaigning and I know many who share my views.
I appreciate that Senator Sue Serino is keeping her message positive. I know she’s trustworthy and refreshingly honest and it’s clear she cares about the people. She turns down money for her travel expenses and she’s always supporting local causes to help make life better for others. She has effectively listened to the people of our communities and responded to their needs in a positive manner. Anyone who knows Sue understands she does this job to help people and she does not care if a person is Republican or Democrat. Sue Serino is there for all of us.
John Amico, Wappingers Falls
This caught my eye: “(Sue) does not care if a person is Republican or Democrat. Sue is there for all of us.”
These words are telling.
The author of this letter states an understanding, and this understanding is conveyed to every reader, the phrase “ALL OF US” constitutes, is defined as, is limited to, or at a minimum for practical purposes at election times and at moments of political decision making, is effectively reduced to “Republican(s) and Democrat(s)”.
But if you don’t play that game, if you are not a Republican or a Democrat, if you don’t act like one, if you don’t vote for one, if you don’t accept this theory, then, you see, you clearly are not and cannot be considered “(ONE) OF US”.
This is a great example of that which is terribly wrong in our political system and in our thinking about the mechanics of a winner-take-all policy of elections. In fact it is in my view the key wrong in American democracy since the emergence of the corrupt-from-the-start two party system a century and a half ago.
Through this letter, and through the millions and millions of messages similarly cogitated, easily published, and propagated-to-near-ubiquity each and every day, one and many will be (mis-)led to believe no others, besides the Democratic and Republican party candidates, besides the ideas, interests, organizations, and platforms of these two respective factions, exist – that no choices, no interests, no ideas, no people, no possibilities, no alternatives, no arguments, no policies, no options may, can, could, or ought to exist.
Other options do exist. It is just that reliably as each election reaches its peak frenzy other options are not fairly or justly considered. Why? Because two powerful established factions, the Democratic and Republican parties, supported by the concept of a winner-take-all theory of democracy (often it’s a bare plurality of voters that mandates who wins and who rules), tacitly work together if they do not actively coordinate, to convey the now clearly dubious conclusion that any other options are unnecessary and impractical, indeed that any and all political processes, ideas, proposals, perspectives and organizations independent of these two parties are actually dangerous and must at all costs be discounted, ridiculed, marginalized, suppressed, and effectively, yes, censored. Decades of acceptance of this status quo results in an emerging, conjunctional two-party tyranny which effectively monopolizes all state power, all public policy decisions, all options, all thinking, all consciousness. New thinking and independent re-thinking is urgently needed!
Other, independent options are imperative, they will need to be created, if the political, technical, environmental and planetary systems life itself relies upon for survival are not to fail from exhaustion and from the abject stupidities which even today, even in full view of the most obvious and imminent perils, continue to govern human “civilization.”