The rhetoric leading up to the current national debt “crisis” has been a careful orchestration of fear. Chaos is a huge money-maker.

For years, we have been told to fear “terrorism,” certain religions, the list goes on and on. Now it is our neighbors.

Every time, it is a threat to our survival, our “way of life.” Government is too big, they say, though I have never heard their definition. Taxes are too high, they say, yet the party of fiscal responsibility has not been paying taxes.

Under George W. Bush, the responsible party started two unfunded wars for the first time in our history and gave its rich friends plenty of tax loopholes and cuts while our soldiers died.

These games have decimated support systems meant to give us peace of mind, while we struggle for a smaller and smaller paycheck. Now they profess collective amnesia for their role in our current crisis, a crisis of their own invention and intention. Republicans know that if they create a crisis they can pass anything. Ethics? Peace? No, that would be socialism!

They know that if they create fear and hatred of our poor, elderly or disabled neighbors, they can justify grabbing more money for themselves while we are preoccupied with surviving.

They are no better than bullies in the schoolyard, taking my lunch money again.

You may think you are better, since you are “working for a living” (July 17). Just wait until you break a leg, you get “downsized,” or a tornado hits. Then the neighbors whom you condemn now as lazy, stupid and good for nothing will be your only hope. You will then likely pray that neither they, nor God, didn’t hear what you said about them.

Stacey Jacobsohn

Augusta

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