Our representatives again ensure their reelection, bringing pork into the local economy and, uh, "keeping America strong" (as an afterthought) by ensuring the construction of more white elephants, oops, I mean, submarines.

Think bottle-cap collectors buying and tossing the Coke to save the caps. In other words, spend billions of dollars to build redundant-ain't-the-word hardware to keep Electric Boat and the contractors serving it humming so those submarines can lurk underseas with all the other submarines and do − what? − something that is already being done. 

Sure, it is great that those jobs keep ticking, thus assuring the aforesaid reelections, which is what this is really about. Love those politicos and the system they work. The country is bleeding dry, but they will cut enough cash loose to get those submarines built, thus keeping the grass green in their own backyards.

What about places without a "defense industry" to sustain them? Wait, not true, the whole nation is on a "defense" footing. If we were not feeding ourselves, and the world, all this armament, the whole shooting match would fold.

We do not have to make America great again. It already is.

Stuart Reininger

West Mystic