Think of the excellence of the system we have right now. Anyone can write a letter to the editor, get it printed and not fear official consequences. I can go to the Village Board meeting or the County Legislature and talk about whatever I want. The police will not come to my door. Even if I question their budget nothing will happen to me. We liberals are very afraid this will change.

We are worried that the “news” might stop being objective and only say what President Donal Trump wants us to hear. PBS and NPR might be taken off the air or lose their independence. If you have never tuned them in, do it now before they are gone.

Their funding can be cut at the federal level. They are a nonpartisan, noncommercial news source. They do good research.

If you are a Fox follower you might get angry when you hear their coverage. Think about that anger. Is it because they contradict something you believe? Research that thing, not just online but in the real world.

Firsthand information is the only thing that can be depended on. That means if you do not believe fire season is year-round in California right now, find someone who has actually been there and ask them. Go to YouTube and find a local California television station. They will be reporting on active fires in their area.

One-third of our population does not believe in Global warming. That third is delusional. Global warming is happening whether or not you believe in it. It’s only now starting to really affect us. Wildfires are happening in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

Here in Western New York, we live next to 20% of all the freshwater on the planet. The drought that’s coming won’t affect us as much as it will Arizona. People from there are already looking here and thinking we could build a pipeline from the Great Lakes to the Sun Belt. They have a larger, wealthier population than we do right now but in 25 years they are projected to have 4 to 5 times the 39 days over 100 degrees they had this year. People will move to where the water is, here.

We liberals are sick at heart because we know what killing the clean water act would mean to a scheme like tapping into the Great Lakes. It would make it much easier to go through. “Conservatives” don’t seem to realize how much environmental legislation benefits us here in Chautauqua County. We are the headwaters of the Allegany River and thus the Mississippi. In Fredonia, we drain almost directly into the lake. Our marsh lands act like giant kidneys slowing water down and settling mud out. Cleaning it for us without us doing anything.

Pretty soon land in Buffalo is going to get expensive enough that the owners of something loud, smelly and nasty will decide they can make more money by moving that loud, smelly operation to a place where land is comparatively cheap, and then put up a luxury apartment building in the city.

It will be up to us then to stand together and say anything obnoxious has to go in the brown fields. The old factory sites not on farmland or forest. We need the farmland and forest. We need the factories too.

So, yes, Trump’s election gives me the stomach lurching feeling of falling downstairs all the time and there is no bottom. If that’s what gives you pleasure indulge yourself, but think seriously about what we might lose unless we work together.

Heather Cox Richardson said, “Harris urged people to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.” She told those feeling as if the world is dark indeed, to “fill the sky with the light of a billion brilliant stars, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service,” and to let “that work guide us, even in the face of setbacks, toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America.”

White Supremacy was the heart of the Confederacy. The rebels thought of themselves as aristocracy. They thought their valor and righteous cause, slavery, would give them an easy victory over the cowardly north.

The war was not going well in 1863. Some 7,058 were dead in one battle.

Nov. 19 was the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address Lincoln gave at the ceremony. He reminded the country why they were doing this. “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…. 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.”

Marie Tomlinson is a Fredonia resident.