Tuesday’s Letters to the Editor

Farewell, Texas

EDITOR: The Texas GOP, apparently all hat and no cattle, wants the state to secede from the union. Go ahead and make our day.

We’ll take the Silicon Valley industry, the wine industry and the movie industry, and Texas can have its cattle, cotton and construction industries. We’ll take our oranges, strawberries and figs, and Texas can have its feed grains. We’ll take Stanford, UC, Harvard, Yale and MIT, and Texas can have Baylor and the University of Texas.

We’ll take Wall Street, and Texas can have main street. We’ll take Social Security and Medicare, and Texas can have its state health care system. We’ll take our national economy of $23 trillion, with California’s economy being the fifth-largest in the world, and Texas can have its GDP of $2 trillion.

We’ll take our lobster and calamari, and Texas can have its 72-ounce steaks. We’ll take the Golden State Warriors, and Texas can have the Dallas Mavericks.

We should make Texas an offer it can’t refuse: Oklahoma and Kentucky. That way we can get rid of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell. Hasta la vista, baby. Adios, dasvidaniya, au revoir, arrivederci.

GENE M. COLOMBINI

Santa Rosa

Making enemies

EDITOR: The Supreme Court seems intent on making itself the most hated institution in America. Between its decisions to strike down Roe v. Wade, undermine state gun control laws and chip away at the wall between church and state, the court is establishing precedents that fly in the face of the majority of Americans’ views on these topics.

With respect to the decision to require Maine to fund religious schools, there is one possible response. If churches are to have the right to stick their snouts into the public trough, then they should be required to pay into the trough — eliminate the privileged tax-free status for religious institutions. No reason that churches should have their cake and eat it too.

MATT STONE

Petaluma

Is this us?

EDITOR: Is this who we have become as a country? A place where a person gets threatened with the death of their children just for honoring their oath of office and upholding the law? A place where the vice president gets threatened with a public hanging (gallows constructed and waiting) for the same reasons? Is this us? All those countries that we look down on, countries with brutal dictators, must be having a good laugh as we become more and more like them. Is this us?

RICHARD EVANS

Sebastopol

Elephant in the court

EDITOR: The New York Court of Appeals ruled that elephants do not qualify as persons (“Court: Elephant ‘not a person,’ ” June 15). Elephants are complex, highly intelligent, emotional beings who are self-aware, familial, mourn the dead, suffer depression and are capable of empathy. But they are not “persons” and therefore have no rights.

Why then did the U.S. Supreme Court rule that corporations are persons? A corporation is not alive; it exists only on paper. A corporation has no mind or emotions, cannot vote or run for office, could live forever and is (at best) amoral. As “persons” they have First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly, the right to bear arms and presumably are protected under all other amendments.

Are there any limits to a corporation’s right to bear arms? Could it raise a private army for “protection”? Could it require all employees to carry a weapon at work? If a corporation bought all U.S. radio and TV stations and newspapers, would that be considered an expression of free speech?

So, elephants are not persons, but corporations are. Perhaps we should check our own status from time to time.

GENE A. HOTTEL

Santa Rosa

Guns and violence

EDITOR: You published letters from people blaming media violence for gun violence and suggesting that censoring the media would help. I doubt it.

When I was a kid, there were lots of Westerns and crime shows on TV. Six killings a night in prime time was considered pretty bloodless. When I was a kid, we played with toy guns. Cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers and war were favorites. In addition, we all had real guns for hunting. As far as I know, none of us turned out to be serial killers or mass shooters.

What’s different? Guns in huge numbers, including military-style weapons, are owned by more people. A gun culture exists today that did not exist then. We saw guns as tools, not as toys or things to amass for their own sake. Add fear and hate. Almost every mass killer has left evidence indicating abnormal fear and hate, even before the popularization of the internet.

What’s the source of the fear and hate today? Radical sources on the left and right radicalize readers. In addition, sources that pander to conspiracy theorists, racism and perpetuating the lie that the 2020 election was stolen abound.

BRUCE OMAN

Petaluma

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.