I appreciate Jessica Satterfield for her letter “Really?” [Feb. 16, City Weekly], but I am a bit sad at the pain she feels.
Why, she asks, should someone be thought physically able to help protect their home and family, while said protectors are not judged sufficiently mentally mature to make world-changing adult decisions? When I was 14, I, too, didn’t understand why I was expected to help fight a fire and yet was not allowed to drive the fire truck. I still can’t drive that truck but, alas, at some point I did age enough to share in some semblance of voting power, deserved or not.
Jessica makes a case that people deciding issues of minimum wage, family planning and education should experience the challenges faced by those for whom these decisions are made. From her knowledgeable voice, I am sure she has become so qualified in all she discusses before making her own pronouncements.
Likewise, her forceful declarations about the poor way America runs and how that will cause anarchy in the masses, leading to destruction of the human race, must have come from her international experiences in far-better-run places than here.
I, unfortunately, have had more limited worldwide experience, such as arbiting between aggressive, ignorant tribal leaders who never devolved into anarchy, or my being forced to hold back tears and vomit from the unbelievable stench and filth of my proud Third World host’s restroom. In such experiences, I did not encounter anarchy so much as the feeling that, “This is what it is right now,” accepted with a reasonable amount of, well, humor. Sorry for missing the point, but I see a world that gets better, although at the speed as other geological forces, rather than at the speed of computer dating.
Perhaps Ms. Satterfield is right. If so, I do have a question for her. Since she believes in the 12/21/12 Mayan prophesy of world doom, does she recommend that I cancel my home, fire and property insurance and find a good mountain cave?
Stan Rosenzweig
Cottonwood Heights