Colin Powell will always remain for me a Republican. He embodies intelligence, integrity and a gracious and generally fairly wise nature. His maturity invariaby exercises respectful courtesies extended to all of us.

In all my long years I never thought that I would ever see any party sink so low as the “Republicans,” who are steadily and rightly being viewed by many more of us as Repugnikans. A past Republican, Kevin Phillips, who has authored many excellent books, has observed that that party has swung far too far to the radical right.

The current crew, as with Repugnikans over many decades, is joined at the hip with big business, the rich and ultra-rich, the party of the privileged. That party is currently led by the two multi-billionaire Koch brothers. They have arrogantly declared that the U. S. government is the largest corporation they have ever run. They have recruited in their ranks those who love to blather “God bless America.” It is a strategy that cynical rich ancient Romans used, who commented that any mention of their pantheon of gods and/or goddesses generated heaps of political support for them.

We now have a clash of fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims. They tend to be given to platitudinous cliches, slogans geared to the gullible poorly educated reactionaries, who are all too willing to threaten, murder (such as them thar liberals) and stomp on folks — the sorts of bullies and punks that typified Nazi Germany prior to and during World War II. As I, and so many of my generation, have had fathers, uncles, mothers and aunts who gave their blood and lives during World War II to preserve our precious freedoms, words cannot begin to describe how loathsome those people are. But, true to form, Colin Powell has been the only one among them who has very publicly decried their abuses.

Minnesota used to be one of the very top most progressive states in the nation, thanks to Hubert H. Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Paul Wellstone and others. But Minnesotans are relinquishing that reputation with Michelle Bachmann (“Batswoman” in the estimation of an increasing number of people). She and her cronies encourage violence and revolution. They suggest that the architects of the future of America should be demolitions experts. She and her husband, reputed to be a Christian counselor, apparently figure Social Security funding is a part of their personal savings, therefore will extinguish it with Medicare. She and her bigoted subtractionist cronies want to deny health care to citizens, and to further enlarge the cleft between the rich and poor. She and her fellow Repugnikans will take away whatever they can to give to the rich. We will be peasants and serfs of corporate interests. She and her theocratic pals will rule with iron fists, rather than promote open democracy. As she wishes so earnestly for revolution, and quotes Tom Jefferson, she may find it useful to comment on what he had to say about corporations, and, Abe Lincoln had to say about those monsters as well.

To be a Repugnikan, one should abound in neuroses, psychoses and phobias, as homophobic, Islamophobic, reactionary punks, bullies, and thugs, too willingly carrying out their sociopathic agenda. Rather than worrying about the national debt, all of us must worry about our planet cooking, and all of us with it as these kooks carry on their stink of bigotry, hypocracy, ignorance, anti-intellectualism and violence.

Rick Mammel

Albert Lea