Lawrence Brennan, Waukee

Letter to the Editor

U.S. voter dissatisfaction with establishment politics and candidates is an extension of the same spirit behind the 2011 Arab Spring. People are fed up with candidates and politics as usual. The unrest we are experiencing here in the U.S. is actually a world-wide phenomenon, a global movement that spans countries, cultures, race and religion.

There is unrest and dissatisfaction with the status quo everywhere. Nowhere is this more evident than in the U.S. presidential race. We see frontrunners who are taking on the government establishment — Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders. Both parties are reeling from this backlash. Both parties are scrambling to keep up with these disruptive forces. Both parties are stumbling.

We saw that unhappiness in the Arab Spring, in which very unhappy citizens had to use protests and occupations to put pressure on the regimes. We are seeing the same outrage here in the U.S. with Ammon Bundy and the Oregon militia behaving a lot like the action-oriented dissidents in the Arab Spring.

In the U.S. we still can use the Constitution and elections as our way of exercising "regime change." Let's continue to use the political and election road to achieve change.

— Lawrence Brennan, Waukee