Midnight in America

Dear Editor,

When I was working in a small factory in the St Clair Shores area, I was puzzled by the garbage scattered in the salaried parking lot: an occasional slice of tomato, a ruffle of lettuce like the garnish you would find on a takeout sandwich. The factory employed maybe 300 people over three shifts, seemed to have a congenial working atmosphere. I was there a couple of times a week to oversee workplace health and do the occasional exam, do walk throughs to see that personal protection equipment like ear plugs and safety glasses were being worn.

When I read a sternly worded letter on the employee bulletin board, warning of discipline for anyone throwing garbage in the salaried parking lot, I asked what was going on.

The scraps would attract plump seagulls from the lake nearby. The birds, not recognizing the respect management deserved, would poop on the salaried cars. I was delighted at this witty, simple and irreverent response to the separate salaried and hourly parking lots. The salaried lot was paved and snow plowed, while the hourly was dirt, potholed, uncared for.

The real answer was for everyone to park wherever.

I think of this example of the way Americans respond to authority as we approach the Trump presidency. We will need all our imagination, all our cheeky impertinence, all our rejection of authoritarian rules in the next 4 years.

We need to be alert to race baiting, McCarthyism, voter suppression and attempts to block our free press. Being vocal when our fellow citizens are isolated because of their religion will not be enough.

I have faith that we will get though the Donathon. I have faith we will remember what it means to be American. I have faith Trump’s diseased administration will reinforce our belief in the Constitution.

It will take more than garnish in the parking lot this time.

Bonnie Beltramo

I am so over it

(In response to: ‘Why I march,’ a column by Susan Bromley, The Citizen, Jan. 21, 2017, page 7)

Dear Editor,

I truly believe it is time for all women’s viewpoints to be represented, not just liberal feminist viewpoints. And the so-called Women’s March last Saturday should not be so arrogant as to presume they represent all women. Many of these groups were funded by George Soros. Many free-thinking women are fed up with being force-fed the mindrot coming out of the LGBTQ/birth control/abortion movement that many of these women’s groups cockadoodle and blather for. I myself have had to endure this regurgitated angry feminist garbage through childhood and into middle age, and I am so over it.
I am completely amused by women who hate being “sexualized,” moaning about how we are more than the sum of our genitals while they waddle around with emblazoned placards and posters of women’s genitalia at these massive gripefests. Ironically, they may very well have offended the transgender types who argue that anatomy and phenotype no longer apply to defining what makes someone decidedly female. From what I saw from this joke of a march was simply a lot of vulgar, lewd, angry harpies, both behind the podiums and out in front of them, whining again about another cliched round of inequal pay (bull), unfair treatment and just a world of misery for anyone born as a real or imagined female.

Space constraints in the community paper prohibit me from going further. But why don’t we really hear what all women have to say, particularly the 53 percent who proudly voted for Mr. Trump, rather than sacrificing the health and welfare of the United States of America to some demographic symbolism. And thank you for the chance to express a different point of view.

Tamara Itoney-Carden