The Valley News’ op-ed content on Saturday contained two takes on political divisiveness that illuminate the issue in striking fashion.
The column by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Keith Burris (“We need two parties, we’ve got two cults”) extols Sen. Barry Goldwater as “one of the finest, most independent, and most unabsorbable of human beings in (American political) history.” The same Goldwater who averred that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” The same Goldwater who, according to Kurt Anderson in Evil Geniuses: the Unmaking of America, produced a 1964 presidential campaign film that juxtaposed scenes of “a small town and its church, white children pledging allegiance to the flag” with “black people protesting and being arrested,” that comprised “three parts decadence interposed with one part good-old-fashioned America,” and concluded with, “By new laws it’s not the lawbreaker who is handcuffed, it is the police. … Vigilante committees, good citizens, grope for a solution.” Goldwater anticipated the insurrection of 2021 at the Capitol when so many “very good people” took the law into their own hands to violate the basic tenets of our democracy. He likely would have had to do some explaining to justify his “no vice” doctrine in the light of those events.
Burris implies our political system characterized by cults underlies the divisiveness of our current political climate. In his op-ed in the same issue (“It’s not ‘divisive’ to expose systemic racism in action”), Valley News columnist Steve Nelson addresses this from a different perspective. The “cultish” sensibility that acknowledges systemic racism in our society is a fact that Nelson views as essential in understanding the basis for the obvious advantages that the white race enjoyed and still does.
We cannot change history, but the least we can do is acknowledge its truth and be grateful for the blessings we have. Being grateful implies being willing to understand the past and to take responsibility in correcting current injustices. As Nelson indicates, New Hampshire bill HB 544 does neither. Its supporters are cultists of the sort that Burris abjures; I hope he would agree.
ANDREW DAUBENSPECK
Lebanon
I was shocked and saddened to learn of the death of Judge Peter Hall, the Vermont judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York (“Vermont’s US appeals court judge dies at 72,” March 12).
I first met Peter Hall in the late 1970s when he and Jerome F. O’Neil were assistant U.S. attorneys under George W.F. Cook and I was covering state and federal courts as a reporter with the Rutland Herald.
Both were unfailingly kind, courteous, respectful and professional in their dealings with me and with other members of the press corps.
I wish you Godspeed, Judge Hall.
MARGO HOWLAND-MASTRO
White River Junction
It is with deep appreciation and gratitude that I express my thanks to the Public Health Council of the Upper Valley. I have had the pleasure of working alongside Alice Ely, the executive director, for several years now, pulling together flu shot clinics. This past year has been incredible. With the assistance of the Public Health Council and other public health region partners, Plainfield was able to host a drive-thru flu shot clinic last fall for more than 200 individuals. In addition, Plainfield was chosen as a COVID-19 vaccination site for some vulnerable seniors in our surrounding communities, and 170 vaccinations were administered. Tremendous success! Ely and her team are now organizing vaccination clinics for our outstanding educators and child care providers, to take place by the end of March.
Thank you to all our public health partners for the team effort in keeping our community members healthy and safe.
STEPHANIE M. SCHELL
Plainfield
The writer is director of community resources and health officer for the town of Plainfield.
While the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is thousands of miles from Hanover, Dartmouth College students remain committed to the nation’s windswept, high-latitude lands. We do have the Still North in our hearts, after all. That’s why we’re proud to see Sen. Jeanne Shaheen co-sponsor S.2461, the Arctic Refuge Protection Act.
The refuge is a national treasure and is owned by all Americans. It is home to the Porcupine caribou herd, musk oxen and gray wolves. Birds that migrate to all 50 states — like the dunlin in New Hampshire — use its coastal plain for breeding and nesting. One of the world’s most threatened polar bear populations uses the area for denning. The refuge is also homeland to the Gwich’in people, who have profound spiritual, cultural and subsistence ties to the 19.6 million acres of rich, wild land.
On Jan. 20, President Joe Biden signed an executive order placing a moratorium on all refuge oil and gas leases, a crucial step toward reversing the Trump administration’s push to open the area to fossil fuel exploration. The Gwich’in refer to these lands as “the sacred place where life begins.” President Donald Trump sold off several leases there for a meager $25 an acre.
Drilling in the Arctic would be devastating for Indigenous people, plant communities and wildlife populations. The refuge is worth far more preserved than exploited by the oil and gas industry, particularly as political and economic trends increasingly veer away from traditional fossil fuels. The Arctic region, which is warming twice as fast as other areas of the planet, cannot afford additional anthropogenic damages.
Two-thirds of Americans, from the public to investors, oppose drilling in the Arctic, and six of the nation’s largest banks have agreed to stop financing oil and gas operations in the refuge.
We are among this majority of Americans who hope to see federal wildlands and the species that inhabit them preserved for future generations. As students with a commitment to wildlife, public lands and the health of the environment, we lend our support to Sen. Shaheen.
SOLEIL GAYLORD
and NICHOLAS MANCINI
Hanover
As the assistant behavior specialist at a therapeutic high school in Sullivan County, I’ve seen the immense needs of our youth struggling with mental and behavioral health in New Hampshire.
In 2016, New Hampshire’s System of Care law was passed to ensure that our youth would have access to appropriate and comprehensive mental and behavioral health services. Yet five years later, we have youth in crisis waiting in emergency rooms for pediatric beds for weeks, law enforcement officers managing children in mental health emergencies with tools designed for adult criminals, and schools without the resources to identify and intervene with students showing signs of mental and behavioral health needs.
Community-based services work. In my personal experience, I’d been hospitalized twice for suicide attempts by age 16. At 17, I became the beneficiary of a pilot program to connect youth in crisis to community resources in Massachusetts. I never once had to wait in an emergency room for more than a few hours, was never cuffed by the police and was never put on probation. Why was this available to me 20 years ago and 67 miles away, but is still up for debate in New Hampshire?
I urge every member of the New Hampshire Legislature to consider what it says about our state when we can’t protect and provide for our children, and to fully fund the system of care for youth, protect mobile crisis and other community-based services, and ensure access to emergency and clinically appropriate residential care for children.
KATIE ANTHONY
Sutton, N.H.
Being an old (75 years old) political junky, I have observed over the years how little things have changed in Washington.
Lately, various Republican politicians have complained about the national deficit. Well, they have memories of convenience. Almost every Republican president since Ronald Reagan has given big tax breaks to the wealthy and major corporations at the expense of the middle class, the working class and the elderly. The alleged “trickle down” economics have never trickled down.
When the Democrats hold office, suddenly the Republicans complain about the deficit when they are the ones who have brought the deficit to its height through their economic policies because of the aforementioned tax breaks, wars and so much more serving their own agendas and wealth.
Neither party has tried to correct the tax laws that would enable a monetary recovery for the above affected classes.
In closing, I guess our representatives in government would have to pay more taxes by helping those in need rather than reap the rewards of their endeavors by lining their pockets and those of the wealthy.
WAYNE MICHAUD
Claremont