I read in these pages a letter by Brad Brigham quite critical of my May column and of others I compose [“Angry columnist actually pretty lucky,” Recorder, June 7]. He writes to defend “our democracy” from me and and questions my background and experience of other countries.

As a student, later a print and video journalist, I’ve lived and worked in many countries. These include the former Soviet Union, Mexico, China, Iran, Egypt, Palestine, India, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, South Africa, Cuba, and all of Central America and of Europe.

None of these places compare with what the United States Constitution promises its citizens, but sadly, this country’s wealth has always been in the accounts of the very few, and it was designed that way by our much revered, slave-owning Founders.

As for the “promise,” our ancestors brought white supremacy in their trunks from Europe. They were responsible for the deaths of 90% of First Americans, enslaved 10 million ethnically different people in the U.S. in order to generate the country’s wealth, and continued to suppress the freed people’s constitutional rights for a full century.

This may be the best country a number of we lighter-skinned folk have experienced but, having more guns than people, of all the world this is the one where it is most likely that a discontented person will walk into a school to shoot little children.

My education, high school and college teaching. and writing, is as a historian. As such, I attempt to reside above politics, but when one of our necessary political parties splits in half, the reasonable ones going silent while the demented half brag about the legislation they’ve passed to help their wealthy donors, while devotedly supporting as their presidential candidate a man indicted for myriad crimes, including wanting to rid us of the Constitution, I approach political judgment.

The letter writers seems a thoughtful reader, and I don’t find his comments a mindless rant. I can measure the points he makes. We know the “promise” of the U.S., but we must understand it is one that is significantly unfulfilled. What remains, including constitutional rule, is now seriously threatened by the narrow, extremist political views of many lawmakers, like the governor of Florida, who seek to establish here an authoritarian power, one absent the protection of established law.

Carl Doerner

Charlemont

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