Letters to the Editor for July 18, 2018

President cavorting with devil

Trump exhibited cowardly behavior at the Helsinki summit, leaving the American people without a strong, genuine leader. Russia is laughing at us, and our allies are crying. We are left feeling confused and saddened, except for Vladimir Putin.

We have a bully in the White House who denigrates our partners and surrenders to powerful thugs. He is selling his soul to the devil, and we, the American people, could pay the price.

Trup sides with Russia

The president just stood before the entire world and took the side of Vladimir Putin against the entire U.S. intelligence community.

That is the definition of treason.

Climate science isn’t partisan

Steve Scalise, a Congressman from Louisiana, has once again introduced a House resolution decrying the alleged evils of pricing carbon pollution. Economists, of both the left and the right wing varieties, endorse such carbon pricing as a way of reigning in greenhouse gases. Scientists who have studied the matter agree that it would work, and should be done.

Large businesses see regulation as inevitable and have favored carbon pricing as a way to introduce reductions without shocking the economy. However, Scalise has decided to defy the economists, business leaders and scientists in an effort to turn a basic fact of science – that gases such as carbon dioxide and methane trap heat and are rising too quickly for the world to adapt – into a partisan matter that he can grandstand on, harming the long-term health of our economy in the process. This is bad policy, bad politics, and all citizens of the U.S. should contact their representatives in Congress and ask them to stand against this sort of nonsense.

Trump’s rambling incompetence

The only difference between the Trump administration and Hitler’s Germany is that the Nazis were competent. Gestapo goons, acting on the orders of an elected madman, kept meticulous records as they murdered millions of innocents. U.S. border agents, acting on the orders of an elected sociopath, can’t even keep track of a few hundred children.

This is not the America my father and uncles and cousins and brother and I served to protect and defend. Americans don’t hold children hostage. Americans don’t force toddlers to stand before a judge without benefit of counsel. Americans don’t act like goons.

We are witnessing the rise of fascism in all its malevolent horror. A vainglorious, ignorant buffoon has risen to power by a razor-thin margin, aided by a hostile foreign power. He has no understanding of, interest in, or respect for our constitution. Trump’s racist, egocentric agenda continues unabated, with the tacit approval of a congressional majority too cowardly to confront him.

The American people need to demand that Congress hold a spirited and substantive debate on our immigration system, then fix it. The people also need to send a clear message that we will not accept Trump’s incoherent ramblings as legitimate policy.