Sounding off: What is ‘supremacy’?

I offer this opinion at the risk of being labeled, but I believe that it’s important that the term “supremacy” deserves greater scrutiny.

I first heard the term years ago. It gradually and ultimately disappeared as a result of the civil rights movement begun in the ’60s. The left has resurrected the term as a device to define what they believe are ignoble motives of the right.

They are right to an extent. Some whites probably view minorities on the basis of race and/or customs and mores they believe to be inferior. On the other hand, it is my belief that these views have largely disappeared. There is more than sufficient evidence to support this. So why does the left have the need to use this tactic?

Let’s stipulate that slavery and Jim Crow have curtailed minority advancement. However, as evil as they were, they cannot detract from the contributions made by whites for advancements in human rights, medicine, engineering, science, education, transportation, agriculture, economic freedom and growth, social services, and so many more.

Why must the left generalize that these accomplishments are attributed to privilege? To be sure, some benefited from privilege. Some probably benefited from nefarious acts. However, I believe most benefited from ambition, hard work, personal sacrifice, love and care of family and — equally important — a constitutional system and Bill of Rights that encouraged and protected individualism and self-achievement.

Louis F. D’Emilio, Penn Township, Westmoreland County

Wild claims about climate change, Trump, reparations

Rudy Gagliardi makes some pretty preposterous statements in his letter “Trump will get my vote.”

He says “I think global warming is something Al Gore came up with to become a millionaire.” Seems pretty arrogant to think that nature gives a damn what you think. Are you a climatologist? Obviously not. Neither is Trump, or the bloviators on Fox News. The majority of real scientists who study climate agree climate change is an imminent threat.

If you don’t believe the scientists, just look at the evidence. July was the hottest month on record. Ice is melting and sea level is rising. We are having more 100-year storms. Gagliardi must be willfully blind to ignore the obvious fact that the real money is being made in denying climate change, not inventing a hoax.

When he says Trump “has done more good for our country in two years than most presidents have done in eight,” I wonder what he is talking about. Was it the trillions of dollars of debt we incurred by his tax breaks for the rich? Was it that Trump has buddied up with our enemies and alienated our friends and allies? Or the 76 environmental laws overturned so the rich can get richer at the expense of our earth?

I think Gagliardi must have meant “reparations,” not “repatriations,” should be paid to living slaves; in any case, he knows perfectly well that there are no living slaves, at least in the sense he implies.

Do I infer from his third paragraph that he thinks Obama is a racist? Details, please.

Al Duerig, Salem

Mental health laws must change

How sanctimoniously disingenuous are those politically correct gun-control dogmatists who believe this one issue is the end-all and be-all to mass casualty shootings, failing to recognize the primordial cause. Most sensible individuals can see through their puerile thought.

Foremost, the mental heath laws demand change. Several years ago, the New England Journal of Medicine ran a comprehensive three-part series outlining the brokenness of the system with suggestions for substantive changes.

Doctors and nurses working in mental health provide one example after another authenticating the system’s brokenness. I once had a mental health nurse tell me, “I could have a delusional patient wielding a knife in the middle of a waiting room but until they plunged it into someone, I couldn’t get them (psychiatrically) committed.” Obviously this is a hyperbolic comment. However, the grounding of this statement comes from utter frustration with obsolete, impotent jurisprudence of the past 50 years.

Mental health laws must be changed, enacting fresh new legislation protecting society from delusional individuals harboring thoughts of homicide and suicide, possibily following through on their delusions. This includes legal proceedings to confiscate the patient’s gun(s).

The individuals shrieking for gun control are like people who claim they scuba dived in the Great Barrier Reef, while they have only soaked in a shallow blue kiddie pool. Talk about ridiculous. Nonetheless, many in the media blindly follow them, confusing the kiddie pool with the Great Barrier Reef. I’ve never seen a shark in a little blue kiddie pool. Have you?

The Rev. James Holland, West Deer

How much greed is in a gallon of gas?

I totally agree with Robert Ober’s letter “Petroleum industry greed.” There is too much greed in a $3 gallon of gasoline.

The oil company greed (the drillers, a tedious and dirty job) charges $1.38 per gallon (at $58 per 42-gallon barrel). Then the refinery greed (it runs 24 hours a day, and requires a lot of employees to make the gasoline from crude) adds 51 cents. The distributors’ and retailers’ greed, for the pipeline, trucks and gasoline stations, open all hours, is 35 cents per gallon. Without any of these guys, you don’t get gasoline for your automobile. Bringing the total to $2.24. Outrageous. Those darn capitalists. So greedy. Fortunately, they face competition.

Wait a minute, we seem to be missing 76 cents. Oh, here it is — that would be for government greed — aka, taxes. Government receives this money without working for it, nothing but sitting at a desk. And it’s not a 24/7 job.

Why do we keep blaming capitalists, when the GOVERNMENT is the greedy one. The government always keeps its hands in our pockets. And when did you last see someone start a competitor to the government?

Don Carrera, Penn Township, Westmoreland County

Gun violence, cultural change

We all stand horrified at gun violence. However afraid, we must continue to stand for freedom.

Red flag laws or gun prohibitions will not halt our problem. At best, they may slow the pace or change the weapons used; at worst, they will invite a police state or pathway for personal payback.

Detecting evildoers and preventing gun access will only turn those bent on destruction of life to another weapon. Recently, in front of a Pittsburgh police officer, two people were stabbed, one fatally. Do we take away knives?

If we identify potential evildoers, what then? Watch them? How many watchers? Reopen the sanitariums when many with mental health issues have been abandoned to the streets to save money?

I’m not proposing that we put our heads in the sand. I am proposing that we address the source. Find commonalities among those who choose to take these heinous actions.

What’s changed in our culture? Civility? Gone. The family, especially fathers and their role? Marginalized. Disintegrated. Personal responsibility? Passé. Our moral foundation? Cracked. Society can only slip into chaos when its moorings have come loose.

No, red flag laws and gun control cannot save us. But we can, with God’s help, begin taking responsibility for our own lives and actions, our families and children, how we behave behind the wheel, toward co-workers and with neighbors. We need to be the change we want to see.

Holly Marcheck, Unity

Let’s get serious about our problems

When is it time we can be done with this? People put up billboards with harmful messaging that is influential and may be effective enough to encourage harm. The Republican Party of Fayette County puts congresswomen’s faces on dartboards, believing it’s funny to use their pictures as targets at the county fair (“Dartboard with faces of 4 congresswomen sparks controversy at Fayette County Fair.” ) President Trump’s continued selecting of unqualified individuals for important government positions because they are big donors or feed his ego with compliments.

Let’s get back to the seriousness of the world’s problems, issues like climate change, gun control, job losses due to automation and health care people can afford. There are proposals passed by the House to deal with these issues, but they lay on the Senate leader’s desk, never to be brought to a vote.

As for our elected officials: Sen. Pat Toomey’s cowardly silence on banning assault-style weapons is unthinkable. Our newly elected Guy Reschenthaler, who earned an “A” from the NRA, falls lock-step into the conservative mold, ignoring the obvious obstruction of justice by Trump (“Mueller show’s over; it’s time to move on.”) Reschenthaler calling Mueller’s report anti-American, therefore calling Mueller anti-American, is disgraceful. Reschenthaler would be lucky to have such a reputation.

Frank Flori, Hempfield

Where's Trump's wall?

Well, it’s been six months, and I just wanted to check in on the emergency at the border. Are the troops stationed there safe and well supplied and staying clear of harm’s way? No casualties, I hope, from the “invasion” of women, children and infants.

I’m just asking because it has been close to four months since I have heard President Trump mention the matter. His own party for two years denied him his boondoggle wall. He then bypasses Congress and its purse strings by declaring an emergency and steals money from the military budget he claims is his top priority.

Close to three years in and very little wall built. Don’t tell his followers that, though. They think it’s already built.

Joe Lucas, South Side