All 10 voted for President Donald Trump’s deficit boosting “One Big Brutal Bill.” District 4 Rep. Jim Jordan supported his vote with “you know it’s a good bill because the left hates it.” Among other things, the bill cut Medicaid, Medicare and Food Stamps for tens of millions and, at the same time, made tax breaks for the wealthy permanent. I am not the sharpest tool in the shed but it doesn’t take a genius to see where Republican priorities lie.
Nine of the 10 voted for Trump’s Rescissions Act of 2025 (H.R. 4). Rep. Jordan supported his “Yea” vote saying “Don’t spend money on stupid things and don’t subsidize biased media.” H.R. 4 rescinded about $9.4 billion in Congressionally-approved funding primarily for foreign aid programs addressing global public health, international disaster assistance and hunger relief and for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
I doubt that the recipients of that food, medicine and disaster relief were invited to a stakeholder meeting to discuss the life-or-death consequences of cutting off this aid. I am certain they would, if they could, strongly disagree that these lifelines are “stupid things.” CPB is dissolving after 60 years of operation. PBS and NPR still exist but without federal funding. Some of their programming doesn’t always fit the conservative narrative of a straight, white, Christian, male-dominated, equal-opportunity America with a largely unblemished past and few social problems today.
PBS offers documentaries that sometimes focus on the ugly or overlooked parts of America’s history and current social issues. PBS shows like “Redlining: Mapping Inequality in Dayton and Springfield” about discriminatory real estate, banking and lending practices and institutional racism right in our own backyard, and “Slavery by Another Name” about peonage, or debt slavery, that followed the Civil War, and “Women of WWII: The Untold Stories” are examples. “Biased media?” Hardly. Perhaps conservatives don’t like this kind of programming because an educated, aware, informed and, dare I say woke populace is more difficult to manipulate.
I hope District 4 voters, and all Ohio voters, will recall these events in November and perhaps think twice before casting their vote.
Lansing Ellis
West Chester Twp.
The methods change; the pattern does not
It took me a long time to understand the Book of Revelation and other apocalyptic religious literature. I grew up in fundamentalism, where every word was treated as a literal prediction of the future. I later discovered biblical scholarship, and it changed everything.
Apocalyptic literature does not predict specific events so much as it reveals patterns—the natural consequences of human behavior. Empires rise through power and wealth, then rot through cruelty, greed, and exploitation, and finally collapse. Apocalypse means “unveiling.” It exposes the moral decay behind the scenes. It is ancient protest literature.
That is why John, writing from Patmos, described Babylon—a long-dead empire—as a stand-in for Rome. Allegory allowed truth to survive censorship and tyranny.
Literalism drains scripture of its power and makes it easy to manipulate. When sacred texts are read only at face value, they come to mean whatever those in power want them to mean.
Because apocalyptic texts are allegorical, they apply to every empire: Rome, the British Empire, Nazi Germany—and the United States. The methods change; the pattern does not.
Allegory carries both warning and hope. Evil wins for a time, then loses. You cannot stop history, but you can choose how you live: help the vulnerable, resist cruelty, and stand firm.
As an old American song put it: All you fascists bound to lose.
Kristie Wilson
Dayton
Help out area firefighters
Everyone might want to go out and look at the fire hydrant near your home. You might want to take a few minutes to clear it of snow just in case. Every minute could matter.
Dennis Singleton
Dayton
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