OPINION:
Presidents Trump and Lincoln had similar political experiences during their polarized times.
South Carolina seceded from the Union just because Lincoln won the election (even though he didn’t initially intend to free the slaves).
How many southern Civil War soldiers and civilians were wealthy plantation owners who had much to gain by going to war? Most were influenced and propagated by the stakeholders, as is the case with today’s dissidents.
Then, as now, it is contention over the U.S. economic engine that is the core issue behind media rabble rousing and propaganda. Then it was slavery. Today it’s outsourcing American manufacturing and labor to countries with little or no labor, environmental, currency or trade standards.
We are no longer a frontier nation that can sustain millions violating our immigration laws and borders every year. If we support a continuous invasion on this scale, it will be just another way of winning the lawless race to the bottom and eliminating the middle class.
The forces seeking to maintain the status quo have effectively attacked both recent presidents for using tariffs to increase revenue and restart domestic manufacturing. Common sense in the media has been replaced with straw man attacks and hot-button issues.
As in Lincoln’s polarized time, we are still part of the great experiment. It is now up to us “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth o freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
LOUIS L. BOEHM
Orchard Park, New York
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