To succeed in that.

Editor,

TV news, which is where the vast majority of Americans get their news, reports the government shutdown as a Congressional squabble that "both sides" can end if they will only "compromise."

The political process in the USA is thoroughly dysfunctional because the media are dominated by vacuous irrelevancies. Science, politics, history, economics are dumbed down to the lowest possible level of the intellectual sub-basement.

Citizens refuse to pay for government services they do not use personally. There is absolutely zero comprehension across the American public at large that in a society in which everybody shares the cost of the myriad details of self government, everybody benefits from the results.

My community prospers because a kid I do not know receives a subsidized lunch at a school in Texas. A butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon brings the water fowl back to Fonyo Beach in October.

It's the converse of a gun in every pocket and an axe to grind.

A creative, cooperative, supportive social environment brings out the best in everyone.

The kid who gets the lunch in Texas goes to junior college when he graduates, becomes a nurse, and helps to rehabilitate a person in a car crash who goes back to work and finds the cure for cancer.

I do not understand why so many people are so resentful of people who only want to contribute to society and need an environment of encouragement, acceptance, and mutual support to succeed in that.

Re: "A Terrible, Tragic Game" (10/5/2013)