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Paul Farmer, Harvard physician and anthropologist, co-founder of Partners in Health, died on February 21 at the age 62 in Rwanda after a lifetime of caring for the poor in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Siberia and the Navajo Nation. He was quoted (AP) as saying,”I am not cynical, cynicism is a dead end.”

I try to hold that admirable thought as we witness the unvaccinated clogging, almost breaking, hospital staffs across the United States claiming vaccination mandates designed to protect the population as a whole are “forced” vaccinations that infringe on their “freedom” as citizens; try to hold it as Republicans have refused to support any of the Biden administration’s efforts to bolster programs supporting the infrastructure of this country in health, the environment, in social justice; Republicans who cry that President Biden is weak and derelict in his efforts to help stave off war in Ukraine, even while Donald Trump calls Vladimir Putin “savvy and a genius” as he amasses troops on independent Ukraine’s borders while falsely claiming Ukraine to be the aggressor, a claim equal to the “big lie” that Donald Trump actually won the 2021 election.

When I think of the Republicans decades-long refusal to address gun control, who rolled back over 100 environmental laws and regulations during the Trump years, who railed again passage of the Affordable Care Act, whose only real accomplishment over Trump’s four years in office was to lower taxes for the rich and large corporations, who refuse to condemn Trump’s role in the January 6th insurrection and want him back in office, I try not to be cynical.

It was Karl Marx who wrote, “there must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery.” (“Love and Capitol”).

Truth over cynicism.

Christine Wardenburg-Skinner

Edison