Goodwin on Alienation

The Times is to be commended for publishing Richard N. Goodwin’s thought-provoking column on the alienation and sense of powerlessness that is endemic among even our educated population (“Must a Sense of Impotence Keep Our Masses Silenced?,” Op-Ed Page, May 19.)

Goodwin’s articulate call to somehow overthrow our present smoke-and-mirrors “political” system (really a Reaganized social advertising and deception system) is marred only by his assertion that our own political leaders are “more tenuously ensconced” than those in the Soviet Union and China, and thus, more likely to heed to call of the people and enact significant reforms.

By now it is clear that there is more change occurring in the Politburo, in terms of percentage of incumbents ousted, than here in our own Congress. Why, in the 1988 election, more than 96% of the incumbents who ran for reelection won. As long as corporate America can buy the incumbents, and as long as the majority of Americans either don’t vote at all or reelect these tools of concentrated capital, the system will not change very much.

The remarkable thing is that this is what we want. For in a democratic republic such as ours, the people get the government that they deserve.

KARL LAWSON

Oxnard