Category Archives: Letters to the Editor

Wave Boarding

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Leaders of nations around the world, autocratic and/or elected, are all riding varying waves of political and cultural history and momentum. The United States is no exception, but what Donald Trump has ingeniously done is change the American ethos from one of being an amalgam “Melting Pot” of diverse peoples and cultures to the earlier one of “Manifest Destiny”, the belief that the bounty of New World was God’s gift to enterprising, primarily white immigrants claiming ownership of land and utilizing the newly arriving labor to create personal wealth and build a nation of winners and losers based on capitalist exploitation. Black slavery was eventually abolished, but “people of color” and women have long belonged to a distinctly lesser class to be put to use. In Donald Trump’s view, America has always been a white man’s world.

For those who thought and hoped his semi-coherent rambling was merely political bluster and posturing are today waking up to the realization that America has elected an ego maniac who fully intends to do everything he said he would do in leading the free world into the 21st Century. Those less zealous riding his coattails into the future should be questioning just what exactly they have signed up on.

When the unelected million/billionaire Tech titans are seated in the front row with the incoming Cabinet members behind them at the inauguration, it is clear who Trump sees as the best Americans to be rewarded, those making the most money. His pardon of the Capital rioters indicates his concept of law-and-order is that criminals supporting him are heroes, not criminals, and he intends to “weaponize the Justice Department” against his perceived enemies. The talk radio spin and doublethink on all this is mind boggling, but having January 6th made a national holiday looms as an actual possibility. Further, on the subject of mania and beyond, Elon Musk, the Buck Rogers dreamer of space travel and the colonization of Mars and self appointed Czar of government efficiency is not the first genius mind in history to go off the rails. His dalliance and embrace of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany is more than sadly disturbing. It is dangerous in our next four year journey into the future.

RP

Money

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Year after year, election after election, it is increasingly clear that the most significant Supreme Court ruling was not overturning Roe v. Wade, but granting unlimited power to money as a weapon of free speech. Money is now a dominant force in politics, leaving Parties racing to raise money. Combined with our toxic concentration of wealth and the ability of media platforms to control information, this further weakens public influence in political dialogue. We no longer have a government “…for the people…” but one controlled by a wealthy elite legislatively protecting its hold on power. To a degree, this is exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind in writing the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence applied only to British rule.

RP

Pac-Man

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My initial exposure to today’s technological revolution was occasionally playing Pac-Man in bars around town. Great marketing strategy no doubt there, but it didn’t hold my interest long. There were more interesting things to capture my mind. I imagine this distinctly marks me as a gaming and techno dodo bird, but what comes to mind now is just how prescient this simple introductory game was. The tech world is constantly racing to gobble up, with profit ever in mind, everything in its path, our shopping, communication, work, entertainment, homes, cars, leisure time, sanity, money, and war, in short everything integral in modern life, creating on its way constant distraction from the realities of the physical world around us, often with addictions that further diminish our singular human capabilities. This is not to say there are not positives in technological advances, but the mass collection of personal data, our likes and dislikes, is an invasion of privacy from which we have virtually no protection. It matters not if one calls it Big Brother, big government, or corporate greed and power, the feeling of losing control has entered everyone’s life, on both sides of the political spectrum. Further, technology’s thirst for electricity to function and store all that data is insatiable. Just trust us, we have all the answers you need for life today. As a cautionary warning, however, the substantive definition of “artificial” in AI is “not real”.

RP

Avatar

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Religious and exploitive, white supremacy has been at the core of the American ethos since the first European colonists arrived. The New World was God’s gift to enterprising freedom seekers, and what a grand gift it has been. Waves of entrepreneurs, religious and economic, swept across the continent, pushing aside all standing in their way. Donald Trump, thus, is not an upstart anomaly in the American experience. He is the embodiment of a segment of its ethnic and cultural psyche and history. That he has millions of America First, true believers enthusiastically supporting his candidacy shows how deeply embedded bullying white supremacy remains in the hearts of much of the American public. He is their avatar, and it is he and his followers who are the true victims of injustice in today’s morally and technologically evolving world. “We represent all that is great in America and we are under attack spiritually, emotionally, and economically. We are its anchor”. If there is weakness in Trump’s drive to power it is his blatant need of acceptance and love, and that white supremacy no longer abides below the radar and now needs a heroic figurehead. A nationwide admittance of Truth and Reconciliation concerning the dark side of American history is possible but perhaps a bridge too far. Further, there is in Moby Dick, that most American of novels, the example of the sailors on the Pequod, open-eyed, casting their lot with the mad obsession of Ahab. America’s future awaits.

RP

Town and Gown

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To the Editor:

Boulder has been a college town since first landing the University of Colorado. As the University grew, the city benefited and grew around it as a symbiotic partner. Under Bruce Benson and a Republican Board of Regents, tired of having to go hat-in-hand to an increasingly tight-fisted State Legislature for funding, CU adopted a pro-growth corporate real estate business model–bigger is better and more is more money. The University is run as a business operation, with generous tax benefits. Similarly, the City Council has joined the growth and development bandwagon and, for some unknown reason, so has the local Indian Peaks Chapter of the Sierra Club. How this has fared for Boulder residents is where problems arise. Housing has not kept pace with business development and thousands of cars commute into and drive around town every day, resulting in constantly increasing traffic congestion and ozone pollution. It is impossible to find practical benefit for residents and neighborhoods from the Google invitation, the University’s Limelight (hogging) Hotel on the Hill, or the proposed South Campus expansion on a site that is a natural open wonder as it stands “as is”. CU, the City Council, and the Sierra Club have each chosen to ignore the impact of the project on its carbon footprint and utilities use despite the reality of climate change, global warming, and the West’s continuing drought. In the coming election, the people of Boulder have an opportunity to make a clear statement for the environment and for themselves. Vote Yes to Repeal.

RP

Development

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To the Editor:

While pointedly a Boulder bubble issue, the referendum to repeal an annexation agreement between CU and the City which allows the University to build another campus on a former riparian wetland/floodplain on the south end of town has ramifications beyond residents’ concerns about potential flooding and local traffic congestion and pollution. There are bigger issues at stake. Global warming, the extended drought across the West, and increasingly strong weather events are the direct result of our pumping long dormant fossil carbon into the atmosphere. Climate change is global, and the Earth is becoming far less accommodating of our life on it. Conserving water and reducing, not increasing, our natural gas use and overall carbon footprint are regularly ignored. The University of Colorado is a public institution and its governing Board of Regents is elected statewide. As a major rental developer in Boulder, it should be acting more for the overall public good rather than its narrow self interest. Such environmental consideration should be applied to development projects all along the Front Range.

RP

Rush to Judgement

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It is a miracle that not one Republican Senator has been trampled in the rush behind Mitch McConnell to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court with yet another Federalist Society approved Conservative Justice. They are an orderly, lockstep group. Overturning Roe v. Wade is a hot-button issue Republicans have used for decades to court anti-abortion voters, but the 2020 elections have wider concerns. In the minority, RBG’s dissent on removing protections for voter rights was plain and simple–In a rainstorm, don’t put your umbrella away because you are not getting wet. With a 6-3 majority, we can look forward to more Court-sanctioned voter suppression, and in decision after decision, including Citizens United, the Conservative Justices have ruled in the favor of corporate and monied interests over those of everyday Americans. The Republican Party first and foremost uses the Court to be its voice for big money

-RP

Social Distancing

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To the Editor:
The last time the air was so clear and silent and the sun so intense was in the days America shut down in shock over the attack on the World Trade Center. What distinguishes today’s shut down is that we have awakened simultaneously to a health crisis, an economic crisis, and the climate crisis of global warming. The common thread running through these is that capitalism went globally viral after the fall of the Soviet Union. Rather than promoting a communal sharing of the resources of the earth, both natural and human, the economic modus operandi has been “grab as much as you can”. Social distancing may hold the key to reining in the COVID-19 pandemic, but throughout history mankind has been relentlessly practicing social distance and economic isolation from poverty, hunger, homelessness, mental illness, and the casualties of war, and the wealthy of the world are its most adept. Perhaps this is just “human nature”. One hopes not. Whether we call this a social crisis, an existential crisis, or a crisis of the soul, this is the reality staring us in the face today. – RP  

Senate Race

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To the Editor:
For those Democrats wary of John Hickenlooper’s ties to fracking and the Party establishment and uncertain of Andrew Romanoff’s electability as a Bernie Sanders, “socialist” acolyte, there is an interesting alternative, Trisha Zornio. Colorado was the first state to grant suffrage to women. It seems overdue to finally send a woman from here to the U.S. Senate, and not just any woman. Trisha is a climate scientist, and what America direly needs now is knowledgable minds, not political ideologues, to address the nation’s coming climate challenges. Trisha Zornio is a worthy consideration. 

RP

Data mining

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The algorithm horse is out of the barn and galloping around the globe.

Rather than building firewalls monitoring data mining from their massive trove of public information, tech companies like Facebook and Google have made billions selling it to advertising and political campaigns and other, more nefarious, enterprises, including Russian operatives skilled at targeted propaganda messaging designed to incite political and ethnic divisions with the aim of opening a back door to power for authoritarian voices around the world and here in yet another Presidential election.

Nationalists are rising in Europe, Buddhists and Hindus are attacking and killing Muslims in Asia and India, and Donald Trump has aroused the abiding white supremacy of America’s “Manifest Destiny”. Anger, uncertainty, fear, and stress have been shown to physically alter how our brains function and how we perceive the world around us. A shared acceptance of truth and reality is being so deeply undermined and eroded that putting the world’s ills back into this newly opened Pandora’s Box is beginning to feel impossible, as may well be finding a balance between Western free enterprise, exploitive corporate capitalism and Xi Ping’s increasingly totalitarian control of thought and information in his projected new Han Dynasty.

And, as always, chaos combined with fear is ever the breeding ground of tyrants.