To the editor:

The responses from Mr. Mike Proto and Mr. Jim Manchester to my letter regarding the Congressional “town hall” held in Portsmouth are textbook leftoid complacency.

To the contention, which Proto raises, that Democrats have dominated Rhode Island politics for 60 years, I reply that the Young Republicans are up for the challenge. Young people are often cleaning up the messes left for them by their seniors.

Proto and I have locked horns over this subject before. He’s previously written that, in summary, he deliberately lives in Rhode Island so that he never needs to reconsider his opinions. I remind him, the worm is turning; if Woonsocket can flip for President Trump, so can the whole state when he runs for a fifth term.

Manchester’s letter was peak Boomer, a hilarious reductio ad Hitlerum which only a man of his generation could spell out in earnest. Of the quotations he recites, though, I must correct him that the one about “the Big Lie” is attributable to Joseph Goebbels, a fact which Manchester, no doubt, expects a “Trump Yoot” to know.

It’s worth adding, too, that history’s most infamous vegetarian painter isn’t the only statesman to build concentration camps. During World War II, beloved Democrat FDR—the man who signed the Social Security Act—built concentration camps for Americans of Japanese descent. By executive order, no less.

You can hear Manchester scoffing, can’t you? He might reply that people and their attitudes (and therefore, their political parties) change as time goes on; that the Democrats have come a long, long way since then.

Indeed, they have—and not for the better. Gone are the days of the Democrats who championed the working man, the unions and the consumer. Now they champion in-state tuition for illegals, “self-pleasure” sex-ed classes in public schools and tax-funded genital mutilation for teenagers. Their hold on state and local politics here means that Rhode Island, with their party, has slipped into the Twilight Zone (Boomer reference.)

Despite Manchester’s insistence, I probably won’t enjoy the “social safety net” whose coffers his generation will likely drain dry. And if I am living in a basement, it’s because his peers, having mismanaged the country, demand more than they paid for the same property with money that goes less far today.

Fortunately, there’s a place where basement-dwellers and first-time homeowners can join forces to begin to correct these issues.
I invite curious young people—whether they prefer to wear jackboots or ballet slippers—to check out the Bristol Young Republicans. Our next meeting will be Thursday, May 29, on the second floor of the Lincoln Club at 9 Saint Elizabeth St.

Zachary Cooper
48A Sherman Ave

Zachary Cooper is a member of the Bristol Town Republican Committee and Vice Chairman of the Bristol Young Republicans.