To The Reader’s Forum:

It is time to face the truth. AMERICA IS DOOMED. Why the fear and foreboding over the coming apocalypse? Why the dread and alarm that the Constitution of the United States will soon be ripped from its inert glass enclosure and consigned to the bonfire of history?

In the fifties, my generation was told we must fear the awesome might of the Russian military. Given the demonstrated ineptitude of the Russian army in Ukraine, I no longer fear the Russians. In the nineties and ought’s’, we were told to fear the awesome might and power of the growing Chinese economy. Given some of the recent stories out of China, I am no longer as afraid of the Chinese as I once was.

In the meantime, we do need to dread the machinations of the bankers and politicians who inhabit the ‘axis of evil’ that runs from the money center in New York to the power center in Washington. The threat that the oligarchs embody is real, but they are homegrown terrorists, and we can deal with them when the damages they do finally become insufferable.

However, the greatest threat to American democracy is APATHY. It seems that Americans just don’t care. Voter turnout for national elections is usually in the 60% range. Statewide elections are lower. For local elections a turnout of 20% is considered good. For local referenda turnouts as low as five or ten percent are considered great.

These low turnouts create a condition of ‘tyranny of the minority’. This apathy and disinterest make it possible for a tiny, activist minority to impose its will contrary to what may be the will of the majority. This happens because the majority is too uninterested and too disinterested to act on behalf of its own interests.

This past week we were presented with two absolute prime examples of what we mean by ‘tyranny of the minority’ and the complicity of the majority by the majority’s inaction. On Tuesday, December 12, 2023, thousands of citizens of the Brocton school district were saddled with and shackled to a debt of $16,800,000 by the action of 101 of their neighbors. An ugly fact that no one likes to acknowledge is that 100% of the responsibility and obligation for the payment of principal and interest on that debt belongs to the people of the Brocton school district.

A second prime example of tyranny of the minority happened in the Pine Valley district on December 13, 2023, when thousands of voters were saddled with and shackled to a debt of $9,100,000 by the action of 147 of their neighbors. Again 100% of the obligation and responsibility for payment of principal and interest belong to the people of Pine Valley.

As I said, the bankruptcy and collapse of this great nation will not happen through the agency of “others”. It will happen because we, who should be interested and active, do nothing. To paraphrase Disraeli,” the only circumstance necessary for the tyranny of the minority is that the majority do nothing.”

Sincerely,

Larry Zollinger,

South Dayton