As summer fades into fall I see some things unchanged. No one has taken your guns, no one has forced you to wear a mask, you can choose to get vaccinated or not, history is history no matter who wishes it untrue, no voter fraud evidence, and pompous, rich white men still control our federal government.

I watch as our local leaders have tossed any thought of embracing and benefitting all of their constituents, instead, holding on to the hate and division infecting their disgruntled minority of likeminded. I watch our mayor jump on the alternative history bandwagon, attempting to put God into our Constitution. A sorry attempt to remove our most important safeguard, separation of church and state? As a candidate for governor I hear her say that climate change is “not even on her radar” as I breathe smoke, watch our local farmers struggle and our reservoirs evaporate. I watch an angry minority blame mandates for failed businesses when they are guilty (not just presently but historically) with their denial of science, Facebook research and irresponsibility. Their maskless anti-vax freedoms have spread this virus so quickly and thickly that businesses, once able to survive through adaptation and adherence to mandates, have succumbed to the “freedom” spreaders. Hospitals now choose who lives and who dies because of their “freedoms”! Whose fault? “Who lives and who dies!”

I hear the screams “Medical freedom!” ”My body my choice!” and then watch efforts to deny all women that right? I see adults? … endangering their own children, other children, all of us, forcing their maskless freedom on the innocent as they label the responsible “sheeple.”

To experience such things, that my sympathy for the sick and dying anti-vaxers is strained, leaves me heartbroken.

I saw good things. I watched a local, anti-everything, freedom rally fizzle into nothing. A rally in D.C calling to free the (Trump/Republican encouraged) insurrectionists saw police and press outnumber the idiots.

I watch the increasing legal troubles and horrific criminal revelations mount concerning our former president and dream of 2045, when the American white man becomes a minority.

Mike Meyer

Baker City