'Elites' need to stop talking and listen

I am currently in my mid-70s. Although I was raised in a Democrat-leaning family, I became a Republican in my 40s.

My first vote for president was for Lyndon Johnson. I changed my party affiliation after watching his foolish "guns and butter" policies increase the cost in lives and dollars in the Vietnam War. Furthermore, his idiotic "Great Society" spending nearly ruined our country. As inflation soared producing mortgage rates above 16 percent, the American family was changed for the worse. People had to earn more and more dollars just to put food on the table. The graduated income tax took more and more from our families as the dollar lost value. More and more women were forced to work and our children began to be raised by influences outside the family. In the process, the American dream became an impossibility for many.

However, politics as usual, does not reside only with the Democrats. Republicans, after Ronald Reagan, another political outsider, failed to make good on promise after promise. I became an Independent after G.W. Bush's Medicare drug coverage deal.

Entrenched politicians of both parties just don't seem to get it. They just cannot understand that Donald Trump was elected by a vast number of working people who are fed up with government-sponsored welfare, political "deals" that benefit the insider, career political class, the loss of good jobs due to manufacturing moving to low-wage countries and corporate bailouts.

The time is over for business as usual by both parties in Washington. It's about time that the mass media, including the Daily Herald, stop criticizing our duly elected president, stop yapping and listen for a change.

C.E. Glomski

Elk Grove Village