Progress cited?

To the Journal editor:

Dump night at (a local tavern). In Big Bay on Tuesday nights, a group of local old men gather at a cultural salt lick where opinions on politics, the outdoors, and other pressing issues of the day are hotly debated.

The themes this week ran from Megan Rapinoe’s unwillingness to make America great again; the overall threat of identity politics; Colin Kaepernick and Betsy Ross; and a shared nostalgia for a time when the privileges of our gender were less trampled upon.

Sound like a bunch of conservative narrow-mindedness? Think again. I never dreamed I’d see the day when these beer-drinking patriots would be discussing women’s soccer!

Sure, they see Rapinoe as a blue-haired commie lesbian bent on man’s decline, but the good news is they feel the ladies should be paid the same half-mil the men get.

Now that’s progress, folks. In listening to (various people) I found hope under those MAGA hats. As an informal hearing on what ails this country, dump night suggests the implicit need for America to move beyond a two-party system and toward a more parliamentary form of government.

As evidence of this, consider the fractured state of affairs affected by the last election cycle. What all too many of us on the right and the left experienced was a shared frustration at being left with no choice between Trump and Clinton.

A choice forced by a broken system.

RANDALL L. TESSIER, Ph.D.

Ann Arbor