Now that Thanksgiving is over, we can properly move on to the next holiday in succession. I have a message that I'd like to share with the entire country, but lacking that, I'll address it to the stolid citizens of Susquehanna County.

There are those who really make the coming holiday season a giant headache. I'm referring to those who, every year, whine about a mythical "War on Christmas". They're out of line and in serious need of an attitude adjustment. And it starts with learning the facts: Christianity does not own Christmas. Jesus was not born December 25th. The Catholic Church in the 4th century put his birthday then to co-opt the pagan Winter Solstice festivals. And they admit it! Our Puritan forebears knew this, which is why they made celebrating Christmas illegal (now there's your "War on Christmas")! Finally, our Christmas customs are largely German, not American, and date from the Victorian Era, not time immemorial. And they often have nothing to do with Baby Jesus, so what are you squawking about?

Given all this, Christians cannot complain about how people celebrate or do not celebrate the holiday season. You're not entitled to have every business ratify and endorse your beliefs and customs. Even less so the government. So stop being annual crybabies. Stop being dictators. Live and let live. And if heathens are claiming the holiday back, accept it in good graces-- it was never really yours to begin with. Festive Solstice to all.

(That's the REAL "reason for the season".)

Sincerely,

Stephen Van Eck

Rushville, PA

You might not have seen the film, Network, but there's a line in Paddy Chayefsky's screen script that we all know. It reverberates more strongly today than it did when the movie opened 40 years ago.

A TV anchorman, played by Peter Finch, is frustrated beyond his breaking point. He urges his viewers to throw open a window and shout to the world, “We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore.” And it's happening now. Americans are mad as hell.

We're mad as hell because we can't make ends meet. One hundred million of us are out of work and can't find a job, half as many more are on food stamps. The government's 5.6 unemployment rate is fiction; the real number is closer to 20 percent. The middle class is being squeezed in a vice between high taxes and a dollar that's shrinking in buying power. Wages adjusted for inflation show that middle-class income has been stagnant for 15 years while prices creep steadily up.

We're mad as hell because increasing numbers of Americans have McJobs. One in 4 of us scrapes by on less than $10 an hour with no benefits. Two-thirds cannot pay an unexpected $500 bill. And one-third has zero saving just one payday away from falling off the middle-class bandwagon.

As if that was not bad enough, the average household owes more than $7,000 in credit card debt alone. And every year immigrants, legal and illegal, pour across our porous borders undercutting Americans for jobs.

We're mad as hell. That's why you see us packed into stadiums, auditoriums, and banquet halls, or whatever meeting palace has the biggest capacity. They flock by the thousands and if accommodations permit by the tens of thousands.

We're eager to hear an off-the-cuff speech, no teleprompters, no script. We've heard it before on TV and computer monitors yet we come to hear it once more. The message hits home every time: America is the world's patsy.

Last year our imports from China, Japan, and Mexico totaled $895 billion. Our exports to those nations added up to $433 billion. In other words, for every $1 we sell to them we buy $2 from them. A business with that kind of balance sheet would be out of business.

Great American manufacturing hubs like Detroit, Michigan, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, are nodes in what has come to be called the rust belt, cities characterized by declining industries, dilapidated factories, dwindling populations, and a diminishing tax base.

As the tax base evaporates, so does the reputation of public schools and the quality of public utilities (electricity, gas, water, sewage).

Chicago, that swaggering metropolis that Carl Sandburg called the “City with the big shoulders,” has become the icon of the rust belt. About 1.3 million residents are living below the poverty line. Civility comes apart. The Windy City is a free-fire zone. Year to date, more than 2,700 people were shot in Chicagoland.

We're mad as hell because voting for either party isn't going to change a thing. George Wallace coined a phase 50 years ago. It rings as true then as it does today: “There not a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.”

Ballots don't count; dollars do. The Cerberus alliance among government, Big Business, and Big Media, holds the purse strings. Big Business funnels dollars to elect complaint candidates or lavishes lobbying dollars for favored incumbents to pass accommodative legislation. And Big Media is held hostage by advertising dollars.

It didn't happen by accident.

It's what Big Business---the multinational corporations: Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Agra---bought and paid for. They got their cheap overseas labor with no environmental or OSHA regs to cut into profits. Everyone wins: the pols who were paid off, the foreigners who manufactured what was formerly stamped Made In The U.S.A., and Big Business. Yes, everyone wins except the average American family.

But all that changed six months ago. The silent majority found a voice and it felt good; someone was listening. That voice belongs to Donald Trump, a self-made multi-billionaire, and a world-class businessman. The Donald is stumping to become the CEO of the biggest business in the world, the United States government.

Trump not only doesn't need Big Businesses' bucks, but he also won't accept them either directly or indirectly through PACs. He's self-funded and not beholden to any of them. He's also a maverick. Let the parlor room GOP and TV's talking heads say what they will; Trump doesn't care. This candidate comes with no strings attached.

Next November Americans finally get a chance to break the back of the corpocracy that our democracy has become. Ballots have an opportunity to “trump” corporate dollars. Could Donald Trump be the man to Make America Great Again? Maybe. At this point, he's our best bet---perhaps our only bet.

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA