Letters to the Editor: 02.25.16

Unforgiving Hardwood

East Hampton

February 22, 2016

Dear Mr. Rattray, 

The game, played on the on the unforgiving hardwood Friday, had all the elements. Small versus big, both in athletes and schools. The fans bestowed energy on Bonac’s five, who returned the favor with some brilliant play. Years ago, coaching in the high school, I realized winning comes down to the team with fewer droughts. Three, four minutes without a score. Two droughts heightens the predicament, three droughts may be telling. From the get-go, Bonac’s five played with skill, verve, intelligence, and energy. 

Resilient, knocked to the floor, up like a sportsman willing to hit the hardwood. Fearless slashing attacks by Kennedy-Gay, timely rebounding and scoring by the coach’s kid, ferocious rebounds and blocks by Brandon Johnson battling the bigs inside, and all three staying out of foul trouble. Young Jack Reese met some skills he hadn’t seen and remained unperturbed down to his steal later in the game. The quiet assassin, Regis O’Neil, making everyone better being in the right place. They left it all on the hardwood and lost the county championship by less than a moment.

It was good so many of the girls team members made the game. They saw something to cheer for in the boys’ effort. For them the hardwood was cruel, without a win in the league for the second straight year. The brutal first-quarter shutouts seemed to foster dispirited play, forgetful of team. Later injuries to two players in the rotation did not help.

Irony showed the night the boys whopped Hampton Bays, a fierce rival having little this year. The first five with sixth man Chris Stoecker shut out the Baymen until halfway through the second quarter. It made me think that the great Fotopoulos girl was having her way in Hampton Bays. Boys and girls play at the same moment and never see each other play. With my injured girl at play practice, I got to watch the boys’ winning ways. The next morning in Newsday the girls’ box score had Fotopoulos for 30, Bonackers a few less. There but for the grace of God.

Each team finished shy a win. The boys will take a lot more than tears from their workmanlike game performance. League champions, they get to go on to “the older I get the better I was.”

The girls too will be able to share their singular experience in a college room or gym. Dispiriting as it was, they shall speak at the end of the story, offering the humorous finale to the others’ bragging: “My last two years we didn’t win a league game. The second year they canceled our one chance against a small school — pretty much meant no wins to brag about.”

You can learn a lot about a player and coach when you watch them on the hardwood, the unforgiving hardwood. One side is prettier than the other; it’s the tale of two programs.

Very truly yours, 

BILL FLEMING

Osborne Lane a Freeway

East Hampton

February 21, 2016

To the Editor:

My family and I take our lives in our hands walking along Osborne Lane. Traffic zooms by without any thought to our safety, much less traffic laws. Trucks seem to think Osborne Lane is a freeway. 

The quality-of-life issue has left me frazzled. Even after the summer traffic disappeared, there is still no change in the number of speeding vehicles. 

Can you please help the residents of Osborne Lane address the traffic issue before they are killed walking their dogs or children on our street?

Thank you in advance for your help. 

KIMBERLY ROMAGNOLA

Ralph Carpentier

South Orange, N.J.

February 21, 2016

To the Editor:

In 1955, Ralph Carpentier had a baby girl. This was not expected. It was not part of the plan. But, being the son of Italian-American immigrants, raised in Queens by a close-knit family with a loving mother, two strong sisters, and a father who survived World War I and the Depression through his ingenuity and hard work, my father did what he felt he had to do. He left Greenwich Village, humming with be-bop and Abstract Expressionism, where he had been studying art at N.Y.U. on the G.I. Bill, to come to the eastern end of Long Island, where he knew the artists summered. He got a job teaching art at East Hampton High School. He made furniture with George Schulte. He hauled seine with Ted Lester. He pounded shingles with Johnny Caramagna. He did what he had to do to make a good life for his daughter, for his wife, Horty, and for himself.

Everyone knows that in the landscapes of the East End‚ with its flat vistas of potato fields, its 18th-century barns, its convoluted inlets and bays, its open, weather-beaten skies, my father found his identity as a painter. In painting precisely ordered, Dutch-inspired landscapes during the era dominated by de Kooning, Pollock, and Rivers, my father stubbornly went his own way. He paid a big price for that, but it is something his family and his descendants should always be proud of. His decisions were honorable and they made us who we are. But Ralph appreciated good art whatever its style; he always taught us that art is about line, form, composition, and color, whatever the surface images may say.

The 18th and the 19th centuries were at war in my father’s paintings. He sought to escape the passion of his nature in the measured, controlled, serene worlds he created of sea, field, and sky — but look closely, and there is usually a tiny dog sniffing in the stubble, an isolated man gazing at the sky, a solitary boat rocking in the sea, all but engulfed by the beauty of the surrounding natural world. And, sure enough, every line and every form in the painting is subtly designed to take your eye right there, right there to where the man stands, alone in the universe. 

As Ralph aged, the romantic side of his nature began to force its way into his paintings more and more. In the blue, green, and gray cloud-ridden scenes, suddenly the sky would be orange, or the field would be lined with chartreuse, or the sea would be deep purple, lit by a tiny white moon. These were our favorites, even though he was always a little bit more nervous about them. 

Now there’s only one unfinished painting left, still sitting on the easel in his studio. “I have to move the figure a little bit to the right,” he said to me last summer, as I futilely tried to lower his palette table to the level of his wheelchair, “and I have to fill in that line of trees with more color.”

My friends often wonder, although they show me the grace of not asking, why I seem to avoid East Hampton. It is painful for me to come here, not because of painful memories, although like everyone else I have plenty of those, but because of happy memories. East Hampton, Amagansett, and especially Springs are all frozen in time for me — everywhere I look I see a photograph of the past, and every change since then is an unbearable desecration of those memories. 

For me, it is always about 1965, give or take; the sun is always shining, and it is always summer. My beautiful gypsy stepmother has taken me to Louse Point and she is sunbathing in her bikini while I swim, or, on the inlet side, dig in the muck with my toes for clams. Or I am making mud pies with my cousins under the scrub oaks behind Fort Pond Boulevard. Or Anna Moss and I are furiously pedaling our bikes past Bell Woods to Amagansett, because the cool kids hang out at Indian Wells. Or the artists are having another bacchanalian clambake on the beach — the clams, lobsters, corn-on-the-cob roasting in the sand, sparks from the big bonfire flitting upward, and the ocean ominous and vast in the darkening night. 

And where is Ralph Carpentier? He is a busy man. If he’s not pounding shingles or painting in his studio, he’s probably at a meeting — Baymen’s Association, Artists Alliance, architectural review board — we all know how generously he gave of his time to the preservation of this community he loved so much. 

Or he’s sailing his New Haven Sharpie, the Heron, a shallow-draft 19th-century wooden ketch made to fish the waters of Long Island Sound, which he lovingly restored. For there was nothing the hands of Ralph Carpentier could not restore to its pristine origins or make from scratch. From the largest things, like our house, which he built, or the Marine Museum he created for this town — every installation and display of which, from the history of the menhaden fishing industry to the artifacts of local shipwrecks to the diorama of the East End, designed, built, crafted, and painted by his hands — to the smallest things: pottery thrown on his wheel and baked in his kiln, puppets and stage sets, ships in bottles, book illustrations, films, frames, figurines, and even a perfect miniature Chippendale jewelry chest for Horty. 

For Ralph Carpentier was first and foremost a creator: a father, a husband, a craftsman, an artist, and also a great teacher, always willing to help anyone who stood at his side and wanted to know how it was made or how to make it. 

As we say goodbye to Ralph, I would like to conclude with James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” a novel I have been teaching for some 25 years, and which my father told me he read long ago and identified with as a young Catholic boy trying to free himself to become the artist he dreamed of being. It ends with the following words, which express very simply Stephen Dedalus’s desire for his father, his mythic creator, always to be with him: “Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.”

MARTHA C. CARPENTIER

Everything Is Changing

Asheville, N.C.

February 19, 2016

To the Editor:

I consider it a privilege to have grown up in Montauk. It wasn’t until my late teens when I began to travel that I realized how uniquely blessed I was to have my childhood there. Being year-round residents had its challenges, but was also magical. We had so many totally uninhabited beaches to play pirates in, and acres of woods to ride horses through. We took school field trips across Long Island Sound to Mystic, Conn., to see the whaling town. We dug for Blackbeard’s treasure in Money Pond below the Lighthouse. We explored the many deserted bunkers along the cliffs at Camp Hero. I remember when the post office and White’s drugstore shared the small building across the street from Shagwong, and Main Street was a total of maybe 10 buildings.

My dad also grew up in Montauk, when the tiny village was nestled on the bay along Navy Road. The Tuma family, starting with my dad’s grandfather, gave the fishing industry its start. They enjoyed the abundance of fish available at that time, including giant tuna and swordfish. Charter boating was something my dad and all his relatives truly loved, and they made a good living from the sea. Dad could read the water and bird activities to find schools of blues and codfish long before there was sonar. He continued to fish up into his 80s. When lung cancer robbed him of the ability to be on the water, he still went down to the docks every day.

Though I moved to the mountains of North Carolina more than two decades ago, Montauk has always been home. I return as often as possible to see family and friends and walk the cliffs and beaches. Of course, each time I return, there are things that have changed. Businesses bought and sold, but Montauk always held its quirky, salty personality. When Tuma’s Dock sold, I remember a pang of nostalgia, but the building maintained its basic look. 

Now it is a modernized nightclub, and partying 20-somethings spill out into the docks in the early hours. When both the white elephant building and the Manor were sold I was afraid we’d lose those Carl Fisher landmarks. Thankfully, they held their charm, but now something different is happening. I’m not foolish enough to believe that things don’t change in every town, but Montauk is in the midst of a change that signals what I see as a catastrophe. Ditch Plain, where many of us learned to surf and some real legends have surfed, is at risk of possibly losing its access. This comes due to the sale of the legendary East Deck motel (my first studio apartment when I went out on my own), and being prime real estate, development is inevitable.

Trail’s End, which is one of the surviving buildings from the old village, moved to its present location in town, and the very spot where my parents met is sold. On the bay side, Duryea’s, which housed one of the last true ice-making houses and lobster and seafood packing, is sold, as is the Montauket, which for decades was a locals’ favorite. Ronnie’s Deli, Shagwong, Herb’s Market, John’s Pancake House, and Johnny’s Bait and Tackle are sold. That is half of the original Main Street. Deep Hollow Ranch and Gosman’s are up for sale. 

Last week I was heartbroken to hear that the home I grew up in was leveled. My dad and uncle built that house, and it withstood many hurricanes and northeasters. Both my parents took enormous pride in the home and kept it up meticulously. This has become a common occurrence, the buying of solid, well-built year-round residences and the destruction of them in favor of newer, modern constructions.

Now I see these awful pictures of the beaches in Montauk that are being ravaged by the Army Corps project. It appears to have gouged out huge canals and left pipes leaking questionable water into the ocean. Not being there, I haven’t seen this personally, and really don’t want to. Nor do I want to see the cavernous hole in the ground that looks down into what was Dad’s woodworking shop and Mom’s painting studio. My sister was brave enough to go look, and her description of what rubble was left of our family home broke my heart.

Everything I knew and loved about my hometown is changing. People certainly have the right to sell their businesses. I realize that most of these mentioned have stayed in their respective families since I was a kid. I’m just wondering what will become of the quaint little fishing village. They say that change is the one thing in life that you can count on. Maybe the changes will be great, but something precious will also be lost.

WENDY TUMA-BARNES

Why Should I Move?

East Hampton

February 21, 2016

Dear Editor,

I would like to respond to the exaggerated statements recently made by SAFE in regard to activities on Napeague Beach.

I have grown up in this community and feel blessed to be able to have my two children grow up in this community. I have been going to this beach for over 20 years and have never once felt as though I was putting my children in danger by going to this beach. I consider it a family tradition to enjoy this beach on the weekend with my family and friends, sharing experiences I can only hope one day my children will also enjoy. 

To imply that children are in danger of being killed on this beach is a shameful assumption. The homeowners should be ashamed of themselves, instilling fear into everyone with their only goal being creating a private beach. They ask us to move to another beach. Why should I move? I enjoy this beach, and I have no problem enjoying it alongside the homeowners, if they can share. 

However, I am not lucky enough to live on the oceanfront or within walking distance of the ocean as the homeowners on this stretch of beach do, so the only method of getting to this beach is by four-wheel-drive. My family and friends work all summer long and look forward to the weekend days (which amounts to about 8 to 12 days out of 365) in the summer, when we can get together and enjoy our most treasured asset, our local beaches. 

Does it seem worth bringing a lawsuit for what amounts to 8 to 12 days a year when this beach is busy with local families? 

Regards, 

NICOLE CASTILLO

The Beach in Question

Amagansett

February 18, 2016

Dear Editor:

I was just amazed by how hypocritical Theresa Quigley was in a mass email that she sent out last week. This email was a propaganda-filled scare tactic on behalf of her new neighbors, SAFE. The entire town watched her rants, hissy fits, vendettas, and slanders; yes, she called residents Nazis on a live mike. And now for her to come out and try to scare people in such a self-fulfilling manner is terrible. For a person of lifelong East Hampton lineage, I am disappointed in how quickly she has lost her local roots.

For those who don’t know, here are the true facts.

1. Theresa was a one-term councilwoman who ridiculed the use of the community preservation fund for purchase on countless occasions.

2. In 2015, she agreed to the sale of her home in Northwest for $2.5 million to the town, with the use of C.P.F. funds.

3. In January she closes on the purchase of an old and undervalued house just off the beach of Napeague on Whalers Avenue, directly adjoining the beach in question.

4. Last week Theresa sent out a mass email spreading fear with hypocritical remarks on the six-year lawsuit about private beach ownership and public access in Napeague. Why didn’t she send that email out in December or, even better, years ago when she actually had people respecting her opinion? We know why, because she’s a self-fulfilling hypocrite!

The short time Theresa was in office she supported public beach access and beach driving, at least outwardly in public, because she thought it would get her re-elected, but what kind of backroom deals was she making at the time? For her to spread SAFE’s lies and deceits really shows her true colors and values. Move the locals so the elites (Theresa) can have a private beach — disgusting!

She knows that the public’s use of the beach on Napeague long predates her house and most of the houses in the area. She talks about the health of the beach due to the use in the area, but anyone who is local and knows the ocean beaches knows that the beach in this area is one of the healthiest beaches around with plenty of natural sand replenishment. This is another lie by her, and more proof that anything that she says still cannot be trusted.

Theresa, thanks but no thanks. I’ll decide for myself on how important Napeague is for all of East Hampton’s public beach access.

DENNIS MATTIN

No Credible Evidence

East Hampton

February 21, 2016

Dear David,

There is an age-old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this era of Photoshop and entitlement, “believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear” may be more appropriate. The group SAFE and some of its supporters are once again knowingly circulating false and misleading information in their efforts to privatize Napeague Beach. The pictures and videos being circulated and on their website were taken in or around July 2015, when there were unique beach conditions on Napeague Beach, and do not represent normal conditions with full beach access. 

For those not familiar with the situation on Napeague Beach last year, a piping plover nest was found on the beach in litigation. Instead of utilizing the town’s federally approved piping plover program that calls for a small closed-off beach area around the nest with regular monitoring, which has been successfully implemented in East Hampton since the 1980s, the East Hampton Natural Resources Department used the national and federal guidelines, which call for a much larger area of beach to be closed. 

In all other parts of the town where piping plovers nested on a beach that was used by the public, East Hampton’s specific piping plover program was implemented. Napeague was the only area in which the national guidelines were used. 

Using these guidelines (and not the federally approved town program), over half the beach was closed off to vehicles. Having half the beach closed gave an appearance of overcrowding on the remaining accessible beach. This is what is now being falsely passed off by SAFE and others as the everyday situation on Napeague. But even with only half the beach accessible, the public was able to make space, share, get along, and still enjoy themselves, all while respecting one another and the beach. 

Is this beach crowded at times during the summer? Yes, just like every other beach on Long Island, and with half the beach closed due to piping plover nesting, the appearance is even more so. The public is using Napeague Beach the way it been used for decades, and welcomes the members of SAFE and the homeowners in the area to use the beach along with them if they can find it within themselves to share. If not, they are free to go to another beach, perhaps lifeguard-protected, the use of which they find acceptable. What we do not welcome is the homeowners’ desire to change the way the beach has been accessed and used for decades, and the relocating of the public in order to create a private beach for an entitled few. 

For SAFE and others to knowingly circulate this video as an everyday scene of the beach on Napeague is misleading and dishonest. SAFE is again knowingly spreading false information in order to relocate the public to the benefit of the homeowners in the area, and this should be seen for what it is, elitist and self-serving, and should be discredited. 

It also appears to the untrained eye that the video footage being circulated by SAFE and others is sped up in the editing process to create the illusion of speed. The waves in the background of the video appear to be rolling in awfully fast. 

The truth of the matter is that the most crowded days on Napeague are on Sundays in July and August, maybe eight days. Saturdays have less than half the people that Sundays do, and there are only a handful of people there during the week. The only way for members of the public who do not live in the immediate area to access Napeague Beach is by vehicle, and by removing the vehicles you remove the public and create a de facto private beach for those who live within walking distance. 

There is no credible evidence that responsible beach driving and use harms the beach. Napeague Beach has been used by the public the same way for decades as it is being used now, and this beach is in as good a shape as any beach in the town. If anything, the biggest change for the beach has been in the development of houses in the dunes, which has a much greater detrimental effect on the health of the beaches than responsible beach use ever has or will. 

We need to keep East Hampton’s beaches public and accessible to all.

TIM TAYLOR

President

Citizens for Access Rights

Warfare at St. Michael’s

East Hampton

February 22, 2016

Dear David,

Belatedly, I want to express my appreciation for Brian Pope’s hilarious letter about the seniors’ gang warfare between the “canes” and the “scoots” at the St. Michael’s housing project in Amagansett.

It reminds me of James Thurber at his best.

RICHARD ROSENTHAL

Airport ‘Assurances’

East Hampton

February 22, 2016

To the Editor: 

In his letter to the editor published on Feb. 18, Mr. David Gruber derisively elaborates on former Councilman Stanzione’s trip to the Federal Aviation Administration’s headquarters in Wash­ington, D.C.

He obviously speaks from experience. 

It was about 10 years ago when, under the umbrella of some group, subgroup, groupuscule, association, I forgot which, Mr. David Gruber was himself very much involved with F.A.A. headquarters in Washington, D.C. He negotiated a so-called “settlement” of some lawsuit, and he was able to convince some F.A.A. bureaucrat of questionable competence, acting way above his (her?) pay grade, to actually agree to such a “settlement.” The F.A.A. would no longer enforce some (but not all) grant assurances pertaining to the East Hampton Airport starting Jan. 1, 2015.

This does not mean that these same assurances expired, or “ran out,” as Mr. Gruber has repeatedly affirmed in numerous and interminable letters to the editor, and elsewhere, over the better part of a decade. It just means the F.A.A., for reasons that still elude me, agreed not to enforce them. Whether the F.A.A. was in a legal position to even do so still awaits the decision of a federal judge. And if one considers the recent ruling in the Santa Monica case (KSMO), the whole concept is on shaky ground, to say the least.

Lastly, the Town of East Hampton was not a party in the “settlement.” Mr. Gruber had no mandate from the people of this town to take initiatives on airport matters. 

He still does not.

GERALD BOLEIS

 



The writer is president of the East Hampton Aviation Association. — Ed.

For David Calone

East Hampton

February 22, 2016

Dear David,

This June, East Hampton Democrats will have an opportunity to nominate David Calone, an outstanding and unusually accomplished citizen who I believe will capture the minds and hearts of a majority of the voters in our Congressional election in November. In so doing, they will restore the kind of representation they had in Tim Bishop. 

All of the East Hampton Town Democratic elected officials have endorsed David.

I do not intend to spend time with negative comments about Lee Zeldin other than to say that he embraces all of the positions of the Tea Party. That’s enough. 

The background involvement and accomplishments of David Calone are compelling enough to persuade a vote for him. A review of David’s biography reveals a person deeply involved in civic affairs as well as business. He has uniquely combined the two in a way that will be attractive to Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats.

He helped organize a bipartisan caucus in the House of Representatives to stimulate business. He founded Long Island Technologies, which has funded nine Long Island companies. There are many other examples of his pro-business involvements that will endear him to middle-of-the-road Republicans, including the business community.

For East Hamptoners, his activities to strengthen the environment, through, among other things, solar energy and water quality, both from a governmental and business point of view, are concrete and impressive. His leadership as chairman of the Suffolk County Planning Commission has been pro-environment and the commission’s disapproval of the 555 project was pivotal in preventing the beautiful horse farm east of the I.G.A. in Amagansett from becoming a 110-unit condominium. 

The protection of the environment, so important to all of us, has been paramount in David’s public service and business endeavors. 

Help for veterans has been important to him, and he founded the National Patriot Boot Camp to help vets start businesses. 

Employment at the U.S. attorney’s office and with the New York State attorney general will help him be an effective legislator.

David’s roots go deep in the community he will serve.

I commend your readers to his website for greater detail than this space allows.

DAVID J. WEINSTEIN

Complicated Individual

East Hampton

February 18, 2016

To the Editor:

During his tenure on the bench, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was praised for his intellect, acumen, and sophistication, and vilified for his bigotry and narrow-mindedness. A complicated, contentious individual who will ultimately be remembered for two critical votes: Citizens United and the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act. Two decisions of unmitigated fascism that dwarf everything else he supported.

Scalia did not create the process that reversed the fortunes of middle-class Americans. But he put the finishing touches on this process by allowing the electoral process to be rigged in such a way that the imbalance between middle-class and wealthy Americans would remain in place.

In the case of the Voting Rights Act, the Senate voted 97 to 0 to keep it in place. Scalia completely disregarded this vote. Even after 20 states changed their voting processes he wouldn’t accept that he screwed up.

Citizens United was even worse. In a system that was having problems controlling money input, Scalia supported a free-for-all that allowed for the wealth to completely overwhelm the process.

Neither the Constitution nor our democratic processes mattered to him. There was no debate. No rational discourse. Just a bad case of American piggery at its worst.

NEIL HAUSIG

To Redefine Failure

Sag Harbor 

February 22, 2016

Dear David, 

Normally, I don’t like to multitask a brain slowly losing it, but I think I’ll be prepared. I had to wait for Hillary Clinton to win before writing. I heard her victory speech, which sounded much like an inaugural speech from any previous president. I will promise you “I will take care of every one of your needs.” She isn’t the president yet.

After which, Senator Bernie Sanders returned to his usual speech since he entered politics even before Hillary. It feels like the momentum will head in another positive direction for him. A time for me to quote Thomas Merton, the most famous name of the 20th century: “We need to redefine failure.” Look into your own life for a good example, or anyone’s life. Or the life of many successful people. But for thegrace of God, there go I.

We are all human; that previous quote I may just put on my own tombstone. I qualify; I’d like to continue this path for a short or long time. Another surprise for me, as I’ve often stated in the past.

I tuned into MSNBC and accidently turned on the Mass of Supreme Court Justice Scalia. Nine children and 35 grandchildren. At the time, his son, a priest, was speaking of his father throughout the Mass in a realistic and personal way for his entire family, during which he had a great sense of humor. When I saw a black man join him, I wondered could that be Clarence Thomas, as his name came on the TV screen.

Both Scalia and Thomas I often criticized and gave them a bad, bad reputation. Upon reflecting on the experience and the rest of the Mass, I wound up with a guilty conscience. I was reconciled by their physical presence. Are we not all human?

Now I thank God I can watch the Golden State Warriors basketball team break another all-time record of wins. They don’t know how to fail. I will rise again. I don’t like to multitask, but did I?

In peace and compassion, 

LARRY DARCEY

On White Victimhood

South Orange, N.J.

February 18, 2016

Dear Editor,

Election year 2016: turbulent, personal, fabricated, harsh, and unusual. Much of the logic and fact that is set forth herein is attributable to an article by the TV journalist Mike Taibbi.

We know that in the elaborate con game that is American politics, the Republican voter has been the easiest mark in the game, the biggest dope in the room. Everyone in the Beltway knows this. The Republican voters themselves are the only ones who never see it.

Elections are about a lot of things, but at the highest level they are about money. The people who sponsor election campaigns — who pay for the charter jets that fly candidates to the next stop, the 25-piece marching bands that meet them, the TV ads — want tax breaks, regulatory relief, cheap financing, free security in shipping lanes, antitrust waivers, and dozens of other things.

These donors don’t care much about abortion rights, gay marriage, immigration, school vouchers, or the other things normal voters care about and discuss. For them it is about money, and, as far as that goes, the C.E.O. class has had a brilliantly winning electoral strategy for a generation.

They donate heavily to both parties and get everything they want from the Republicans and mostly what they want from Democrats. They get it all from Republicans because they don’t have to make a single concession to their voters. Just follow the Rove 1-2 Plan, show ’em some Mexican babies at an emergency room, two gay men kissing, black teenagers with their pants pulled down; then throw in a Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin to reassure everyone that the Republican Party knows who the real Americans are.

So while we always get free trade agreements and wars and bailouts and mass deregulation of industry and unanimous Republican anticlimate change and lots of other stuff the donors definitely wanted, we didn’t get Roe v. Wade overturned or prayer in the schools or censorship of movies and videogames, or immigration reform, or dozens of other things the Republican voters said they wanted. Wake up and smell the roses.

It has been fun laughing at Michele Bachmann and John Ashcroft and Ted Cruz, who see the face of Jesus on every tree stump and believe the globalist left is planning to take away their guns, abolish golf courses, and line up the Army to take over the country. The truth is that the voters they represented have been irrelevant for decades.

What bothers these big donors now is Donald Trump. Trump’s followers have taken these theories of war on religion and border breakdowns and weakness of America to divert their voters one step further than they had ever imagined, and that creates a problem. 

The problem? These Trumpites may actually vote for an uncontrollable Donald Trump. They have turned some minor cultural changes into a vast conspiracy of white victimhood. They are eating up Trump’s “Make America Great Again” theme because it is a fantasy tale of a once-great culture ruined by an invasion of mongrel criminals, and you know how Americans love conspiracy and fantasy tales.

Woe unto us, they say, hoping that that plaintive cry will persuade and move nonwhite groups to their cause. Look, they say, how bad it has gotten for white people. They cling to this fantasy more fiercely than red-state voters ever clung to guns and religion, and it is untrue, but made more facile by the presence of a black president who makes a great target.

So future elections will not be based on ideas but by numbers. A turnout battle between people who believe in a multicultural country and those who don’t.

All else, from taxes to surveillance to war to jobs to education, will take a back seat to this moronic referendum on white victimhood, and none of the above refers to the nonsense continually spouted by a Sean Hannity or a Bill O’Reilly, which only serves to exacerbate these wild off-the-wall feelings.

RICHARD P. HIGER