DEAR EDITOR:

When did Americans stop believing in the dream of a better country?

Today we have:

• A $7.25 per hour minimum wage, not enough to live indoors (and Missouri just repealed paid sick leave).

• Poor quality public schools (the foundation of democracy) with over half our population reading below a sixth-grade level.

• A broken health care system, where not everyone can receive care, but anyone can find themselves forced into bankruptcy just for getting sick and women with miscarriages are bleeding out in hospital parking lots or dying from sepsis.

• Rights we thought we could count on being methodically stripped away.

• Unfettered gun violence, with daily mass shootings and children traumatized and terrified to go to school.

•A crumbling infrastructure.

• Less clean water, air and soil to grow our food.

•A climate in distress.

Americans don’t have to live in this kind of world. We have the power to demand better, but we don’t.

Instead, we have leaders telling us billionaires aren’t rich enough and need even more money and power. And they have taken food away from hungry children to give the rich even more.

Instead, we allow massive gangs of masked and heavily armed thugs to roam our streets and terrorize everyone.

Our leaders are grabbing as much money as they can, with shakedowns and accepting bribes, and they have zero fear of accountability.

Why do we put up with this?

BETTS THORPE ADGATE

Cortland