Letters to the Editor: Voting ‘pragmatically’ for Biden over Sanders may give us four more years of Trump

To the editor: Erin Aubrey Kaplan’s op-ed article on why black voters are supporting former Vice President Joe Biden over Sen. Bernie Sanders was exactly on target. Comparing Sanders’ ideas to those of Martin Luther King Jr. was right on.

Kaplan wrote, “In the decades since King’s death, many black people have lost touch with the necessity of idealism and imagination.” She also pointed out that the “overwhelming fear of a Trumpian future” is “making pragmatists of us all.”

Not only black voters have traded their idealism for fear. I’m sure many other groups have forsaken idealism for fear-based pragmatism, and they may end up with the very Trumpian future they so deeply fear anyway.

Richard Robinson, Arroyo Grande

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To the editor: Kaplan makes the astonishing statement that socialism is about government policies for the common good.

Throughout history and around the world, socialism has benefited only a small clique: the rulers, their cronies and their henchmen. The average person is sucked dry for the benefit of these few. The poor of course suffer the most.

This is why capitalist countries, rightly or wrongly, sometimes build walls to keep people out, while socialist countries have had to build walls to keep people in.

Kaplan’s statement reminds me of the saying about those who forget history being condemned to repeat it. With many tens of millions murdered in the name of collectivism in the last century, one would hope that we have learned something, but apparently it is still a work in progress.

Jaco van der Colff, Woodland Hills