Letters to the editor for Sept. 7

Tearing down statues won’t change history

It’s disheartening what’s going on in our country.

Tearing down statues won’t change history. We need to take our children to see them, and explain the history it represents.

We need to explain to our children the historical roots of both parties. We need to explain that our government supported slavery.

Explain what the government did to Native Americans. Explain that they are the future that can make changes.

Explain that until every derogatory term is erased from the human language, hatred will thrive.

If every bit of American history is erased, if every statue destroyed, every book and film burned, the only change can come from our hearts and actions. How many lifetimes for that to occur?

People believe outrageous lies if told enough times

Russian interference lie didn’t work, so ...

With the invented scandal of Russian interference in the 2016 election down the tubes, the new invention is that President Donald Trump is a racist. Well, I have a photo of him with Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali, and others receiving the Ellis Island Award for contributing to the conditions of inner city black youth taken long before he ran for president. After this photo gets around perhaps this lie will die too and maybe the truth will prevail. People tend to believe even the most outrageous lies when they are told it enough times and the mainstream media is more than happy to print those lies in large print.

Believe what you like but don’t be a media meathead.

Democrats now have a left wing terrorist hate group

The recent Antifa violence in Berkeley shocks me! It appears Black Lives Matter has morphed into Antifa activists. Around 100 Antifa gang members were bussed into Berkeley for the expressed purpose of disrupting the demonstration. Exiting the buses, I thought they were members of ISIS, wearing black uniforms, hoodies, masks and carrying clubs or other weapons. Without cause, the hooded thugs began to attack innocent people, while the Berkeley police cowered in the shadows. Democrats now have a left wing terrorist hate group, Antifa, funded by George Soros.

Democrats have nothing to run on for 2018, except hate Donald Trump and hate white people. So the Democrat Party has doubled down as the party of racism, hate, class warfare and division. Barack Obama taught them well.

This summer, the Democrat hate theme is tear down Confederate statues and rewrite American history. What will the hate theme be for the 2018 elections? No doubt the same old racist themes to keep their largest voting block in line. Remember the fable about the shepherd boy who repeatedly cried wolf, and the villagers didn’t believe him when a wolf did appear. People are becoming tone deaf to Democrats crying racism every time someone doesn’t get their way. Moral is, nobody believes a liar even when they are telling the truth. Some people need to be told to stop living in the past, grow up, and become productive members of American society!

Corruption of Alvin Parks’ administration choked the life out of citizens

Councilman Roy Mosley has legitimate concerns fearing the economic consequences from panhandlers standing around businesses in East St. Louis asking for change. However, the economic consequences of the city took place during the eight years Mayor Alvin Parks held office. Immediately upon taking office in 2008, Parks imposed a hotel/motel tax increase from 7 percent to 10 percent on the only hotel and motel in the city. The next year, he initiated an ordinance for an additional 1 percent food and beverage tax on all food and liquor sold for immediate consumption. He came back in November 2014 amending and implemented another 1 percent to 2 percent food and liquor tax.

In December 2010, he announced the layoffs of 19 officers, leaving the police department with 43 officers still today. Meanwhile, he forced alarm companies to collect an alarm service fee from alarm owners utilizing the service to protect their property. The council passed a sewer ordinance Sept. 24, 2014, charging increment increases over three years. Let’s not forget the red light camera on 25th Street that was sending out $100 fines. Ex-councilman Delbert Marion complained at a council meeting that TIF money was being handed out as if it were an ATM machine. Political jobs were created disregarding the city’s deficit and city property sold to political insiders without appraisal. The mismanagement and corruption of Parks’ administration was detrimental to the city and choked the life out of the citizens with council as his silent partner.

This is not a country of methodical white-on-black injustice

Confidential memo circulating among liberals: ‘Spread the word to back off the concocted Russian collusion lie, that baloney isn’t working anymore; instead force the bogus white supremacy and Nazi hogwash down America’s throat.’ The Democrats are indeed a party of empty heads so they must create the perception of chaos and turmoil under President Donald Trump. But go figure...

Isn’t it peculiar that in a country supposedly dominated by “white supremacy” that a black man with an Arabic sounding name was elected, and re-elected as President of the United States? That millions of non-whites leave their homeland risking their lives to come to our “white supremacist” country. That blacks fled Africa to come to the United States in greater numbers from 1990-2005 than were brought here as slaves. That this country provides its black population with a higher standard of living than afforded to blacks anywhere else in the world, especially Africa; and American blacks enjoy a higher standard of living than whites do in other parts of the world. What about the numerous race-based preferential treatment policies, like Affirmative Action that’s meant to give privilege to blacks over their white counterparts?

This is not a country of methodical white-on-black injustice. Truth is that white racists who harass or discriminate against blacks are very, very few. Liberals and snowflakes trying to create the perception of white supremacy and systematic racism are numerous.

Compelled to call an assessment of depression

After 30 years in the mental health and social services field as well as a member of the Methodist Church, I am compelled to call William Sturm out on his assessment of depression.

Granted there is a poverty of spirit in our secular culture prompting a great deal of self medication with detrimental affects, but there is also a genuine diagnosis of clinical depression among the general population who can and do respond to medication and live healthy productive lives.

Sturm posits that all depression come from unhappiness. While there is situational depression (ask anyone dealing with the events caused by Hurricane Harvey), there can also be an organic basis for depression. Spiritual counseling and anti-depressants can be indicated for both.

Melancholy will visit us all, but clinical depression comes to stay and will not be extricated without clinical intervention.

As to his Pfizer bashing, I would like for him to be more specific as the medication in question as any med has to go through critical and lengthy peer review before it is marketed.

This story was originally published September 6, 2017 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Letters to the editor for Sept. 7."