To the Editor:
In one sense, Trump has done us a favor. He’s exposed the corruption and the failures of our system of government. A House and Senate that have failed to respond to a clearly unstable man who has conned his way into office.
A Supreme Court with little faith in our constitution, in the separation of powers, in democracy itself. And, we the people, collectively, have re-elected a man that his one-time lawyer, Ty Cobb, has said about him, “… this is a man who was willing to tolerate the hanging of his vice president on Jan, 6th, 2021, in order to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.”
And here we are again, we are at a moment of our constitutional transfer of power. At a moment when we have an opportunity to put an end to the chaos, the tariffs, the bullying. To put a check on the man who enjoys nothing more than throwing his weight around, against our allies, our friends—even Ukraine. He praises our enemies. And he—and his family—profit wildly off the office he holds. Staggeringly so.
What is he willing to do this time to hold onto his unchecked power? We all saw what he was willing to do to hold onto office before. We see what he’s willing to do now. To impose new requirements on voters, claiming to address a problem the facts tell us doesn’t exist. To urge redistricting to weaken the votes of some of our fellow citizens. To call upon the post office to block the voters in states all around the country to try to prevent we, the people, from stopping him from doing whatever he wants. Tear down the East Wing? The Kennedy Center because no one will let him put his name on it? The list of outrages is endless. Outrages that we are paying for.
Watch what he does to continue to create doubt about the elections of the country that has been the gold standard for generations. To create chaos. To create fear. And if that doesn’t work, will he urge the doomsday scenario—Johnson refusing to seat duly elected Democrats because, as Johnson has threatened, he will not allow the Democrats to gain power—no matter what the people want.
This is our moment. Our moment to say no to the madness.
Pat Collins,
Fillmore, Ca.
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To the Editor:
When Americans have to wonder, as you did last week, “whose side the president is on,” we have a major national security problem. Your apathetic reaction casts you within the Revelations description of “lukewarm” you so decried in last week’s Realities. Our president is causing critical, irreversible harm, and worse if he gets two more years to wield unobstructed destructive power. We are lost if we fail to employ constitutional remedies to remove him after midterm elections.
I am not throwing “darts,” Martin, I am communicating what I see and why I am alarmed, and the examples are endless. Trump has arrogantly lit many matches on the path to a world conflagration and economic misery at home, has insulted our allies, and embraced despots. Now the Middle East is on fire. I will do everything I can to keep our country and children out of war, especially one as ill-conceived as Trump’s self-selected “little excursion” into Iran. This is beyond mere “politics.”
I generally don’t send my LTTE to the Gazette before your deadline, because Trump always does something unconstitutional or depraved by Tuesday AM. This week: Trump told Fox foreign correspondent Fox’s Trey Yingst that he is in a “deciding mode” about Iran and “very big things to come in the not-so-distant future. If and when I do blow the entire nation up, they better behave.” We are in the hands of a terrifyingly abusive, manic power, who thinks he commands the world. And the world, at this point, believes we support this madness.
No power is more prized by a prospective dictator than supplanting a free press, and Trump is no exception. Nothing is his fault. Any news that does not reflect his preferred reality is “fake news.” Last week, he defended his decision to expel MSNOW, CNN and Politico from the WH because, “No reason,” he said. “No, it’s a, it’s really just cumulative stories over the last two years. You get sick of it, and you call them, and you tell them.” “Until they straighten themselves out”, he continued. Except, in a free society, the president is entitled to do no such thing.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, reiterated by every other president, ``Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press.” Obama and Biden would have loved less criticism, and would have liked Fox silent, but they revered the Constitution. The president who insists he wants to ”preserve freedom” and “reduce the size of government,” really means he wants to be the sole voice and authority, always.
VP Vance pleaded with the American electorate to, “Give us [Republicans] another chance, or…couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.” He begged voters not to give power to “those who created the problems” [Biden’s fault!]. Most reactions were along the lines of, “After all, there’s still more wars to be waged, more crypto scams to be launched, more record high gas prices to be imposed, more food assistance and health programs to be cut, more Epstein files to be suppressed.
It is an inescapable fact that the Trump administration believes the American public is either incurably susceptible to false assurances, misrepresentations, and hollow promises, or is just dimwitted. We’ve all been fooled by someone or thing at least once in our lives. Trump is a downhill runaway train, and his toady administration and Republican Congress won’t put on the brakes in an increasingly dangerous terrain. We can argue culture issues all we want, but now we are confronting survival.
One question: what kind of a human being demands his own name on the Kennedy Center memorial to an assassinated President?
Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore, Ca.