Political Polarization Exists in U.S., Too

Dear Nica Times:

Regarding your interview with Gen. Humberto Ortega (NT, Sept. 11,18). Political polarization? Sounds like the health care “debate” raging in the U.S. Congress.

I have watched Nicaragua since I first started visiting there eight years ago. The point made by the esteemed general about Sandino’s assassination being a turning point in Nicaragua’s political evolution puts things in a clearer historical perspective for me.

Having been a teenager from Massachusetts when JFK was assassinated, I remember the hope and promise that his presidency represented, and have seen the results of decades of political polarization that that pivotal event has spawned.

The tentacles of the vast “right wing corporate oligarchy” that has spread throughout the world has quaked recently from the excesses of its own greed.

Smaller, more “mobile” countries such as Nicaragua perhaps have the rare opportunity of providing an example to its “patrons.”

If it can mend its decades-old political rifts, it perhaps can catapult itself into a position of respect and prosperity in the region – and become an example to the United States.

The U.S. has a deeper hole to crawl out of than Nicaragua does, because most of the big corporations are based there.

Hari Singh Khalsa

Cóbano, Costa Rica