By Steve Otto

Most weeks I look in The (Sunday) Wichita Eagle for article ideas. Many weeks I find nothing. But there are weeks when I find plenty to write about. Today I discovered a whole page of ideas. They were all written from a conservative point of view.

To start with we had Mike Pompeo,[1]who is now...uh...well, nothing. He wrote an entire article and the best part of it is when he admitted that The New York Times called him "worst Secretary of State in history." And they were right. His article is called Don't back down in our fight for American values. In this, he intends to fight against the progressive left and he never plans to wear down. That's not surprising. This country is full of really bad ideas and he is a major proponent of such bad ideas. What he refers to as American values are actually bullying other nations (AKA imperialism) and the worshiping of really rich people, mostly $millionaires and $billionaires here in this country (AKA capitalism).

In this fight, which he is determined to carry out, he wrote:

"Our resistance to the Left's socialism and the woke cancel culture is a worthy fight, especially as they try to cancel us."

What he is telling us is nothing new. From Republicans Richard Nixon, to Ronald Reagan and now to the gone but not forgotten Donald Trump, I have had a full life-time of struggling against these ass holes and I'm sure they will never stop trying to poison the minds of the young.

I'm also sure that Pompeo does not just include democratic socialists and real Marxist when he uses the word "socialism." He uses a lot of terms that I hear being used by members of the right all the time, such as cancel culture. Most right-wingers make no distinction between President Joe Biden, Former President Barack Obama and the actual socialists of this country. Most of us on the left do not consider centrists such as Biden, to be leftist and definitely not socialist. He is also write that we on the left want to cancel him and his achievements. Again from his own writing:

"Americathe  most exceptional nation the world has ever known, and we can never give an inch. Especially now that the Biden Administration is actively undoing the good work we did."

At times he is right. Many Democrats and others in office, are trying to cancel the damage he and his former boss, Trump, have made. I also know that Biden will not cancel some of the worst actions of former president Trump. For example he does not plan to cancel the crippling sanctions on Venezuela(the topic of another of The Wichita Eagle article, "Maduro has only himself to blame in Venezuela").

Those sanctions are crippling his economy and that hurts EVERYONE living there. Those kind of sanctions are cruel, unnecessary and this country uses them to try and bully foreign leaders into submission. These sanctions are used all over the world and are the most damaging to poor third world, underdeveloped countries. Not all of this countries enemies are socialist, but our leaders and pro-imperialist and pro-capitalist legislators (which is most of them today and until a few years ago was nearly ALL of them over the past 30 years). For example Trump put almost complete sanctions on Iran, which is Islamic, but not really socialist.

One advantage our pro-capitalist leaders love about sanctioning Venezuela is that they can say to the socialists of this country; "see what happens when you chose socialism. The economy is a mess and we can all blames socialism." They like to say that about Cuba. But I have been to Cuba[2]and my experience has taught me to know better. The country functions well and the main problems they have, economically, is that the US has sanctioned them to death. They even ban US citizens from traveling there. The  Pastors for Peace (IFCO) group that I went with got around that ban by flying out of Mexico.

And that brings me to a letter to the editor someone wrote about Vice President Kamala Harris's visit to Guatemala. It wasn't the opinion of the letter writer that got my attention. I used to follow the Revolutionary movements in Guatemala, the guerrillas known as URNG. That was an umbrella group that included four basic armies, The Guatemalan Army of the Poor, The Guatemalan Party of Labour, The Organization of People in Arms and The Rebel Armed Forces. As with guerillas in other Latin American countries, they excepted a cease fire in 1996 and a program that allow them to function as a political party. The fighting from some of these groups began in 1960. But little has been gained since the end of the war. Guatemala today is a very poor basket case of a nation. As is the situation in El Salvador, the poverty in these nations is extreme and with no real way to struggle politically, many people take part in violent gangs.

For the people living in these countries there is a sense of hopelessness. And so many come to the UShoping to have some kind of a future. The real solution to the poverty in those countries is to develop some kind of industry and the development of a living wage. Trump simply tried to build a wall and focused on keeping these poor people out. Conservatives like to call these people illegal and blame them for breaking the law. They also like to blame Democrats for their lack of enthusiasm in keep illegals out. But in reality the Democrats do little more than just ignore those people.

For the last century the US has developed a kind of Apartheid like system. People living above the Mexican border (US and Canada) live as first world people. People below that border live as third world people and most live in extreme poverty. The UShas never made any real effort to change that, in fact they have worked to keep those people as poor and underdeveloped as possible.

To my knowledge there are no USelected politicians who have spoken in favor of serious development to get those people out of the desperate poverty they live in. That has to be part of the solution and at present it is not even being discussed.

So we on the left must continue to fight for a better tomorrow. I don't see that as anti-American values. Anti-capitalism—YES! Anti-imperialism—YES! We don't need to be arrogant. We can value living in harmony with each other.