To The Editor:

According to President Trump and the national-conservative news media, someone who simply supports a federal government social program that helps people such as Social Security and Medicare is a “crazy socialist.”  If we go by that definition, then that would make Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon “crazy socialists” because they both signed new and big federal government social programs that help people into law/existence and they both supported Social Security.

In fact, Ike wrote a letter to his brother in which he stated that any Republican who wants to abolish Social Security is “stupid.”  Well, it appears that today’s national conservative-Republicans have become a lot more conservative and a lot more “stupid” since around 1980 because we sure do have a lot more of them now who want to abolish Social Security and to move our country toward a “Survival-of-the-Fittest” Social Darwinism in which there are no longer any federal government social programs that help the lower and middle classes. They’ve been trying very hard to keep it a secret from all of us.

For example, I recently saw President Trump’s “Acting Chief of Staff” and “Budget Director”, Mick Mulvaney, on television.  When he was a Congressman, he was a favorite of “The Tea Party” and was well-known for arguing that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” that it is “unconstitutional,” and that it should be abolished. Very few Americans know that today’s national Republican Party, more and more, advocates for and stands for a creeping, crazy, and cold-hearted “Survival-of-the-Fittest” Social Darwinism. Democrats need to have the bravery and courage to tell the American people what the national Republicans “have cookin’ for all of us.”

Sincerely, Stewart B. Epstein.

P.S. By way of background, I am a retired college professor of Sociology, Social Work and Psychology who still very much enjoys helping people as well as informing, teaching, and educating people when I believe that I have something to offer to them.  That’s why I write these letters. I am very proud to have taught at West Virginia University, Slippery Rock University, and SUNY-Brockport. In addition, I spent five years working as a New York State-licensed social worker providing therapy and counseling in the fields of Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, Mental Health/Illness, and Marriage and Family Therapy. While I, myself, am not a “recovering” person, I do struggle every day like millions of Americans with my “weight-issue” and with being overweight. It was during those five years that I learned very well how “manipulators” and “deceivers” and “con-artists” operate and use “stealth tactics”, keep secrets from others, and “lie like rugs.”