Readers Write (Feb. 19): Presidential campaign, sex-worker show, cash assistance, Vikings tailgating

We are going through a spike in our antagonism toward our fellow human beings. These blips occur during battles over the big four: land, and social, economic and religious freedoms. If it's not cops killing blacks, it's Christians killing Muslims and Muslims retaliating. If it's not battles over the biggest and most devastating weapons we "deserve" to own because we're Americans, it's whatever Big Oil, Big Pharma and Wall Street tell us we're supposed to be against. On and on. Forever and ever.

I'm embarrassed by some of our so-called leaders' bigotry, classism, misogyny and racism, which serve as the cornerstone for recent political races for the highest office in the land. I'm embarrassed by the way both sides recently trampled on the death of a Supreme Court Justice to be first to stake battle lines over a replacement.

Even more shocking is the fervent support these candidates are getting. Granted, early caucus campaigning draws out a very small faction of the electorate. But they are vocal and frightening to the extreme. I'm reminded of this every day when I get e-mails with an ominous warning about one candidate or another.

There is the threat of war on immigrants — particularly those of Latino heritage and Muslim faith. There are warnings about the war on women, and the other side's clarion call to save our culture and "restore" America to its rightful place in the world order. At every juncture, and in every example of policies meant to defuse conflict and buoy cooperation, these candidates appear with a lighted match.

Not one of the candidates on either side will make it easier for most Americans to earn a living wage, pay their mortgages, and send their children to college or technical school to land a job. And forget about the fight for cleaner air and water or shutting down polluting power sources. Those battles will be fought to a standstill long after I'm dead.

Again, I understand that the caucus system brings out the extremes in our culture, but as my Canadian-born next-door neighbor mused recently — isn't that an insane way to pick a leader?

My answer to him is what I gleaned years ago from Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes": Appealing to our raw anger and frustration and hope paves the road to the White House. By the time we get a chance to pick, the choices are down to two policy-naked individuals who are counting on us buying their wild promises over their opponents'.

I can't help that a woman (of age, evidently) chose this as her line of work. I can't help that she is performing in a play detailing her sex-fetish work for others. I can't. What I can do is object to the fact that the No. 1 newspaper in the Twin Cities chooses to allow and, nay, draws attention to this.

The reason I am so passionate (and vocal) about seeing articles such as this one is that it is almost treated in a "positive" light. I can assure you, there is nothing positive about one human being in servitude to another, for any reason. This industry that [Minneapolis performer] Colleen Kruse chose to be a part of does not need to be highlighted. It needs to be exposed for what it is and what it does collaterally — to society and the young girls and boys it preys upon.

For instance, I recently became licensed to teach elementary school as a second career, leaving the fame (?) and fortune (?) of the corporate world behind. When I go into today's classrooms to be the guest teacher (evidently, the new term for "substitutes"), sometimes I am working with students who need to write about a current event. They use the newspaper for this. They use the Star Tribune for this. I don't want to have any third-, fourth-, fifth- or sixth-graders being exposed to this — especially in a positive light where a smiling blond woman is somehow promoting a play about this very servitude.

So please, Star Tribune, the next time you want to highlight something on the front page of the Variety section, could it possibly be an innocuous movie, book or restaurant review, or anything of a positive and clean nature? I read it, and thousands of schoolchildren do, too.

Elise Weinberg, Mounds View

Another real problem is that for single individuals and couples, it has been 41 years of legislative neglect. The real problem is that inflation has significantly raised the costs of housing, food, clothing, utilities and transportation so that a token benefit increase doesn't really help. An example: $100 could provide housing for an individual 41 years ago. Try to find housing now for $100. Same holds true for families.

The Joint Religious Legislative Coalition recommended the $100 increase last year, and the Legislature was too busy playing politics to even give it a hearing. These are the same public officials who will ask for our votes for their "good" service.

We need to hold our legislators accountable for their indifference to the needs of all our citizens.

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Noting that the Legislature has refused to pass a law that would increase cash assistance for the state's poorest families every year since 1986, that overall school funding has failed to keep pace with inflation since then and also that the Legislature passed a law in 2013 requiring state schools to boost most levels of educational achievement with a threat of defunding schools that don't, I have a question for the Legislature: How is it you can place responsibility solely on schools for student achievement while you have failed in your responsibilities to provide schools and poor students and their families with basic financial resources? What strange logic is this that you can believe you are not a major piece of the problem that you insist the schools alone solve?