LETTERS: Talking ‘woke’, Opinions wanted in news articles, Republicans have changed

Talking ‘woke’

“Woke” is an adjective derived from African American vernacular English meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.” Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism and LGBT rights.

I see that Sam Davis is totally opposed to this idea (Letters, Sept. 20). I can only assume he is opposed to the very woke Golden Rule of the USA, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

How woke could Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams get?

George Washington: “I conceive a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built.” Washington would not be removing books from schools because they were offensive to a MAGA religion.

Hank Shiver

Mission

Opinions wanted in news articles

Editor

Just reflecting on my latest intake of the daily news. I scroll through the channels and every news source is reporting the same headlines, often with the same verbiage and without articulating opposing views.

There are two sides to every story, I’d desperately like hearing them. But when every source presents just one side, it feels like I’m being kept from doing my own thinking. By design. I too, would like to be able to make informed, reasoned judgments about the day’s events, but that judgment is being made for me by someone else.

Let’s take this current issue: the impeachment inquiry. You know, I know and anyone with a TV knows there’s no evidence to justify this by the Republicans. But for once I’d like to witness their buffoonery in action, if only for my own sick amusement.

One side is right, one wrong. Let us view the other side operate, if for no other reason but to prove them unworthy of our vote. Is that so wrong?

During the Cold War, our government contracted with the media to produce false or distorted news to stay ahead of the Russians in a kind of info war. Did our government abandon that? So come on, newsfolk, let us see both sides so we can do our own thinking, rather than do the thinking for us.

Jamey Honaker

Primera

Republicans have changed

Radical Republicans in Abraham Lincoln’s day led the charge to end slavery. Radical Republicans today led the charge to oust their Speaker for doing something reasonable and good, like getting bipartisan support for a short-term spending bill.

Richard Nixon beat a hasty retreat from the public scene when he got caught having knowledge of the Watergate burglary. His Republican counterpart today, Donald Trump, won’t retreat even after 91 criminal counts and the first few of many judgments against him have started to roll in. Why is that?

Today’s Republican Party is much more unscrupulous than it was 50 years ago in Nixon’s day. Sure, individual members of both parties could be bribed then by money behind the scenes. But today, it takes only a red hat and a wink from the boss to unhinge every last party member except a handful. But that’s not all.

The party is so corrupt today because the base of the party and the people of this country as a whole are so morally, ethically, socially, economically and politically bankrupt.

Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah

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