Opinion
Smoky Mountain News
21
On main street, things won’t ever be the same T
Demand nuclear disarmament now To the Editor: In September 2019, I attended a meeting “Nuclear Disarmament Now: What can we do?” Prior to this meeting, this issue was not at the top of my agenda. However, after hearing the speakers and reviewing the information provided, I became aware of the urgency of taking action and informing others about an impending crisis that impacts us as individuals and our earth. In January 2017, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reset the hands of the Doomsday clock to two minutes to midnight. “The danger cannot be overstated,” said the scientists. A growing number of military and policy experts including those from the far right are calling for the United States to take concrete steps toward complete nuclear disarmament. They are saying our nuclear arsenal makes us less secure, not more secure. On July 7, 2017, on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, 122 nations voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The treaty bans the use, threatened use, possession, development, production, testing deployment or transfer of nuclear weapons under international law. It will enter into legal force once 50 nations have signed and ratified it. As of November 2019, 80 nations have signed the treaty and 34 have ratified it. The United States has not signed
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paying workers, keep paying their suppliers, keep paying rent or mortgage and keep paying off debt when there is no cash coming in the door. So yeah, we’ll come out of this. The main streets in Western North Carolina and the country over will still be there when the crowds come back and the cash registers and credit card machines are whirring again. But the guy I’ve known for years who runs the restaurant down the street could very likely be in another town doing something different. The woman who runs the gallery where I get my wife gifts for her birthEditor day and holidays may be stocking grocery store shelves somewhere because the owner of her business just couldn’t find a way to keep the doors open. It’s a frightening future when hard-working people all over the country are having to count on politicians to get them through a hard time. We’ve often heard people accuse them — the politicians — of not knowing anything about Main Street and how it works. As I look down the road and see at least four to eight weeks of shutdowns and definite slowdowns, I’m hoping we’re wrong. I’m hoping those leaders in Washington D.C. and Raleigh
Scott McLeod
he world changed over the weekend, especially on main street. And it likely won’t ever again look the same as it did on Friday, not with the Covid-19 hell storm unleashing its fury. I’m the eternal optimist if ever there was one. But, what I’m picking up these last two days are fears that are so strong they are palpable, pulsing down the street and into everyone’s psyche. This is not about the health care side of this pandemic and how many will die and how many will get sick. That’s an extremely important story, and you can find plenty of news about that on other pages in this issue. I’m talking about the economic disaster barreling down on main street, Anytown USA, as a result of the pandemic. The street with restaurants, galleries, lawyer’s offices, accountants, breweries and furniture stores, with bartenders and servers dressed in black headed to work mid-mornings, professional workers grouping up for lunch at the local eateries, teachers laughing and talking about their days while gathered after work at their favorite pub. Because a lot of those Main Street businesses — and those in the suburbs and in rural areas — aren’t going to survive this. Shutting down for a few days or a few weeks will be the death of far too many entrepreneurial dreams. Those who work in government at the local, state or federal level don’t have a clue about how many small businesses can’t just keep
the treaty. While many think North Korea (or maybe Iran in view of recent events) may be the most imminent nuclear threat to us, the greatest threat to our security is our nuclear weapons, which we use to threaten others and they use to justify their own nuclear ambitions. Recent legislation that has been introduced includes a resolution “Embracing the Goals and Provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” (HR 302) calls on the president to align U.S. policy with the goals of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and make nuclear disarmament the centerpiece of national security policy. “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2019” (HR 669 and SB 200) would require a declaration of war from Congress in order to launch a nuclear first strike. The requirement would not apply in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States or its allies. HR 921 and SB 272 would establish U.S. policy to not use nuclear weapons first. For more information, contact Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (www.ananuclear.org) or Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (www.orepa.org). Please contact your legislators in Congress asking whether they support any of the proposed legislation and urge others to do the same. Now is the time; we must stand up to be heard. Our future demands an end to
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get this right and provide help not only to the large industries owned by their fat-cat donors, but to the workers soon to lose their jobs and the small entrepreneurs who employ those workers and who are the bedrock of this economy. My son works at UNC Charlotte’s swimming pool, but he is effectively laid off because the campus shut down the pool. For him, it was extra spending money. For a whole lot of students at campuses all over the country, those jobs pay rent and tuition and buy food. They need help. When economic downturns loom, the ripple effects are easy to predict: restaurant closes, employees laid off, all of a sudden rent, car payments, groceries, insurance, school tuition, etc., all of it crashes at once or perhaps slowly, over a couple months. I have hope those most at-risk survive the coronavirus, that local workers aren’t devastated by the economic fallout, that the small business owners I call friends make it to the other side of whatever this is we’re in. Right now what we have are a multitude of scary questions and very few answers. (Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)
nuclear armament now.
LETTERS
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OK, so things are looking bad throughout the region after Tuesday’s mandatory closure of restaurants and bars. Do what you are able to support local businesses. They need it now more than ever.
Mary A. Herr Cherokee
Trump’s pardons tell a story To the Editor: Is it possible Donald Trump and the Republican Party he seems to have successfully hijacked have (together) made corruption the political norm in the United States? I’m asking for a friend. Joel Stein (Los Angeles Times) asked a similar question. “Why did President Trump pardon a rogue’s gallery of white-collar criminals?” Stein went on to state: “… many people assume he commuted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s sentence and pardoned junk bond king Michael Milken, tax cheat Bernard Kerik, and others, simply because they were friends or because he owed them a favor.” In Trump’s world view (which we Americans have witnessed with our own eyes and ears), cheating is neither here nor there, it’s irrelevant and these white-collar crooks he pardoned had been unfairly persecuted for doing what everybody else does, it’s no big deal. Blagojevich is calling himself a “political prisoner” even though he was caught, among other crimes, demanding that the CEO of a children’s hospital give his campaign $50,000 or see its public funding cut off.
Stein states succinctly in layman’s terms, “it’s clear who benefits from accepting corruption as normal and inevitable — the strongmen trampling democracy around the globe.” Clearly Donald Trump fits that genre; in fact, it’s not only characteristic of Trump, he excels at it. In Trump’s world (and that of those he surrounds himself ), truth is inconsequential, totally unimportant. Conversely Trump seems to take extraordinary pride in his own lies, the number and severity of which are legend. It was a severe blow to our system of checks and balances that Trump remained in office following his impeachment, dodging justice by disregarding the Constitution and refusing to comply with subpoenas. Our government’s inability to oversee the executive branch coupled with Trump’s distain for truth and justice has substantially crippled our government and contributed significantly to making corruption normal and acceptable. This is a severe threat to our most fundamental institutions and to the very foundations of our democracy. By remaining silent, or by supporting Donald Trump in any way, shape or form, we become (either knowingly or unwittingly) accomplices, co-conspirators in the devaluing and ultimate death of America’s most cherished and treasured moral standards and guiding principles. Are you willing to let that happen? God help us. David L. Snell Franklin
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