To the editor:

I am at a loss to know what to do with certain thoughts and feelings which I have following the mid-term elections. My initial reaction was one of relief and gratitude. I am relieved that my wife and I, as well as tens of millions of other Americans, will not have to be afraid of the possibilty of our Social Security Retirement Benefits being cut by 25 percent by the Republican Senate and House. With the Democrats taking over the House, we will no longer have to be scared for the next two years.

But right now, I am very angry, bitter, resentful, and disappointed in many of my fellow Democrats and even with people who I know and who I had thought cared about me and people like me who have low-incomes. These people do not have low incomes. Many of them have incomes well-above $100,000/year. They are all members of the upper-middle-class and upper-class although they don’t see themselves as being well-to-do and wealthy.

I am very angry at how they scolded me, admonished me, and tried to shame me and bully me for the past two years because I did not prioritize and care very much about the “identity-politics” and “cultural-war” issues that Trump focuses on. I focused on the bread-and-butter issues and on the kitchen-table issues of everyday survival and on protecting the safety-net programs like Social Security. That’s what my letters to the editor focused on. These financially well-off “liberal/progressive” Democrats thought that I should have been more concerned with the plight of illegal immigrants, for example, as they were and are. I don’t understand how they could have been so insensitive to my plight and the plight of the tens of millions of us seniors who have to live on Social Security checks of $1,200/month.

But I am still surprised and disappointed that they have been so insensitive to the plight of those of us who have much lower incomes than they do. I expected more empathy and compassion than this from them.

Now, for the next two years, I will still focus on the bread-and-butter issues that the poor, the near-poor, the lower-middle-class, and the middle-class struggle with that these affluent Democrats do not struggle with.

Stewart B. Epstein

Rochester, New York