Republicans holding nation hostage over debt ceiling
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged that failing to raise the debt ceiling will prevent the United States from paying its debts, triggering an economic disaster for our country. Yet they persist in doing so. Why?
The Republicans have decided to hold the nation hostage. In the words of Mitch McConnell: “It’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.”
But ransoming for what?
The Republicans want to attack their favorite targets: medical care for veterans, Social Security and Medicare, food assistance for older Americans, health coverage and access to care, funding for low-income students, rail safety inspection, air safety, vital transportation infrastructure funding and other vital services.
It is past time for Georgia’s members of Congress to stop holding Georgia and the nation hostage to their partisan, big business agenda.
BRUCE MENKE, ATHENS
Affinity graduations create division, not unity
In “‘Affinity’ graduations create unity” (Insights, May 19), the authors make two astounding claims.
First, they argue that separate graduations for minorities and other groups are “not meant to segregate” students. By definition, when students of only a certain race or group are invited to a ceremony, this segregates students, period.
Second, the authors assert that these separate events somehow create unity. Again, by definition, separation is not unity. Separation is separation. Hold affinity graduations if you like, but let’s not pretend they are unifying the graduates.
More broadly, our country seems to have moved from a great melting pot to a collection of disparate tribes, and our young people are fed a steady diet of systemic racism, oppression and DEI in school and by the media.
I believe that it’s time to unify the country by cherishing our commonalities, not fixating on our demographic differences. I long for the day when our citizens’ primary identity is simply “American.”
DANA R. HERMANSON, MARIETTA
