The New Hampshire primary has certainly brought about an attitude change on the political landscape. Clearly, the victory of Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party and Donald Trump for the Republican Party has told the power brokers on both sides of the aisle, “We have had it with all of you and change is coming.” What kind of change remains to be seen, but the battle lines have been drawn.

There are long months ahead for both candidates and the endless rubber chicken dinners that go with campaigning and the chance that one of the “establishment candidates” will surface and regain control of the political system. But clearly, the first shots of the “Bunker Hill Political Rebellion” have been fired and the call for “No Quarter” has been sounded.

Bernie Sanders has defined himself as a “democratic socialist” and is hell bent on taking on the One Percenters that make up the billionaire class we have today in this country. Like the carnival barker on the midway, shouting out his particular pitch, Bernie Sanders has hit a “perfect pitch” with his “free stuff agenda.” The only problem is, nothing is “free” except being born, which doesn’t cost you a dime and dying, which doesn’t cost you a dime. Everything else in between costs, for “freedom isn’t free.”

Bernie Sanders spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union and he is still believing in the Soviet Utopia that collapsed in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has a large following of what Vladimir Lenin used to refer to as “useful idiots” — the college students of the 1917 Revolution. Young people who have been sold a bill of goods with phony degrees, which are absolutely useless in the real world and have borrowed themselves into poverty through student loans and now feel they are “entitled” to a better life, without working for it.

On the other hand, you have Donald Trump. A no-nonsense capitalistic businessman, with a rude, crude and sometimes vulgar approach to the political system we have today in this country. A man who is self-funding his own campaign and is not afraid to call our present-day politicians “stupid” including our president. A man who to a lot of people is down-to-earth in his approach to our economic, foreign and domestic issues and who has no clue as to how to be a politician and speaks straight off the cuff in most of his rallies.

His no-nonsense approach has hit a “perfect note” to a lot of people in the Republican Party, to the dismay of the establishment leaders.

So we have now come to that fork in the road and we as a nation must make up our minds as to which way do we go. —Jim Garvey, Kalispell