Our country's politicians continue to play childlike games on both sides

While there has been an abundance of news about Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville placing a procedural hold on high level military nominations you do not hear anything about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders using the same leverage for demanding price controls of prescription drugs by withholding nominees.

What will happen to our country because of the childlike games these politicians on both sides continue to play? If our country cannot unite, we will destroy ourselves within.

Kay Hillery, Indian Wells

Why leave out Italian American history in ethnic studies?

I am an Italian American. There are about 16-18 million people of Italian descent in the U.S. Yet we are not even mentioned in the ethnic studies requirement which Tom Elias discussed in his Sept. 12 column. I was shocked to learn the reason. Supposedly we were not worthy of mention because along with the countless other European immigrants, we had a “built in” white privilege.

I am dark skinned. My ancestors were reviled and suffered vicious discrimination in part because of our skin tone. In the South we were not considered white. We were victims of one of the largest mass lynchings in American history. My own grandfather had a cross burned on his lawn. So now what is the excuse for consciously eliminating us from the disingenuous label of “ethnic studies?”

Gene Gambale, Indio

What would Lincoln say if he were alive today?

We as voters are again engaged in a great struggle to preserve our democracy and the Constitution unlike any of us have ever seen since the Civil War. Our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, reminded us of all of our duties and obligation to this country when he gave the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863.

The address starts, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and ends, “From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

If he were alive today, what do you think he would say about our Republican Party? Or about ex-President Donald Trump and his orchestration of the Jan. 6 riots in the U.S. Capitol? Or Trump's staunch political supporters, the multiple federal criminal indictment charges filed against him and the scheme to create fake electors for states, including Georgia? We all really need to give grave consideration to Lincoln’s words before we cast our vote in the 2024 presidential, senate and congressional elections.

David Ormiston, Palm Springs

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Our country's politicians continue to play childlike games on both sides