LePage’s Owes An Apology

I write this letter in response to Governor LePage’s comments that the NAACP should “apologize to northern white people who gave their lives to free them.” Actually, the North, and the New England region in particular, supported its textile industries through the purchase of cotton produced by an exploited and brutalized slave population. As noted historian Ronald Bailey writes, “in 1860 New England mills consumed 283.7 million pounds of cotton, or 67 percent of the 422.6 million pounds of cotton used by U.S.mills.” For generations, we “northerners,” as LePage would say, looked away from the horrors of slavery and instead to the money “King Cotton” put in our pockets. LePage should take a trip to the newly opened African American Museum in Washington when he is in D.C to attend the inauguration and learn some middle school U.S. history. And then he should apologize to all of us for once again embarrassing our state.

Gregory Greenleaf,

Harpswell

Admit our Giant Problem

What kind of society have we helped create for our children? What terrible social conditions have we acclimated to and have normalized?

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Are we, the adults, setting an excellent example for our children?

We have numerous human problems in every area of human activity. There’s much human suffering, large numbers of children in orphanages and homeless children, poor nutrition for many, gross poverty, little employment, increasing suicides among all age groups including teenagers, discrimination, denial of human rights, and human dignity, increasing domestic violence, increasing shootings, sexual violence, human trafficking, a disproportionate military budget, endless wars.

All these problems become worst with each generation!

We have gross environmental problems due to our negligence and especially threatened are the very basic things required for life. Water, air, good soil & food.

About 50 years ago we learned about air pollution, water pollution, about dangerous toxic chemicals… what does it say about a nation when we simply do the same things that brought on all of these problems?

Does anyone ever consider these problems are ultimately due to how we think and live? Do we ever look at how we think and ask why?

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Does anyone ever consider how we think is at least partially due to how we are educated.

It’s not simply how we’re taught, but it’s also what we’re NOT being taught!

Does anyone ever ask these questions or think about all of this?

I think we need ongoing discussions about these issues because it appears the only thing we know is destruction and committing a long drawn out collective suicide.

Education as we know it only trains us to simply be obedient and compliant! That’s about it!

We need to ask many questions; and obtain real answers.

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What don’t we know that can be more helpful to us individually and as a society? What is it that we are not learning? How are our intuitive skills suppressed?

How is our free-will, our inborn, natural intelligence blunted?

I think our greatest problem is that we don’t have the courage to admit to ourselves that we have a gigantic problem!

Joe Ciarrocca,

Brunswick

Protesting the Narcissist

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I’m an 82 year old man in

absolute despair knowing that Donald Trump will be inaugurated President of my country this Friday. He lost the popular vote by nearly 2 million, and a lowly 37 percent of Americans even approve of him in this morning’s national poll. As a check-out clerk said at the grocery yesterday, “He is just not a decent man!” That, I’d say, is an understatement: The Donald wants to reverse immigration policy and set back women’s rights, environmental protections as we face global warming, repeal basic health care for all and civil protections for ethnic minorities and gays. He seems clueless regarding the domestic and world order. Worse than not being “decent,” he is a self-promoting, empty narcissist.

My frustration prompts me to think “What can I do?” Obviously, nothing of import. But at least I can be a lonely protestor up and down Brunswick’s icy Maine Street for several hours after this small potato is sworn in on Friday. I do this only in the hope that my solitary demonstration will make others smile knowingly and feel less alone in our helplessness.

Richard W. Moll,

Brunswick



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