Trump and expectations: Letters to the editor, July 24, 2020
Trump voters, expand your views
Trump voters, here’s a thought: Want to get ahead? Get an education. Didn’t want to put in the time and now too late for you? Make sure your kids get an education, and stop blaming everyone else in the world for your not having a bigger piece of the pie.
And work for better inclusion in the economic system, even if it’s at the lower rungs, as Bernie and Elizabeth have been saying for ages. Yeah, it’s not fair, but voting for another rich person is not going to change anything.
And by the way, your ancestors came from somewhere else, so stop dissing more recent immigrants. What actually makes America great, not becoming great, is this inclusiveness, at least the idea of it. And despite a lot of negative, sensational press, it works most of the time, in most places. Especially if you get an education and open your mind to new ways of thinking, rub shoulders with people from outside your own socioeconomic class and neighborhood.
I know it’s vogue to imagine that everything is external to you, like drug use, mental illness, and now poor economic conditions. But any chance this might be your own doing?
Gene Richards, Fresno
Reason, reality and President Trump
President Trump has repeatedly stated that the coronavirus will someday just go away. Like magic, it will suddenly disappear.
His wishful thinking regarding our worst pandemic in a hundred years started when we had 15 cases, and no deaths, and continues now that we’re approaching 400,000 cases and in excess of 142,000 deaths.
His delusional thinking brings life to the reality that if thought cannot rationalize desire into a semblance of logic, desire may, as a last resort, deny the authority of thought altogether.
David Hume, an 18th century Scottish philosopher and economist, summed up such thinking quite nicely:
“When reason is against a man, the man will soon turn against reason.”
Gary Wayne Walker, Fresno
Recent Voice essay misses the mark
Jill Simonian does not belong in the “Valley Voices” section of the Fresno Bee. Her piece on June 5 plays right into the false narrative that people who are involved in the current public demonstrations for racial justice are “looters, criminals, and/or protesters who throw injurious Molotov cocktails into crowds during ‘non-violent demonstrations.’”
See how Ms. Simonian lumps protesters together with looters and criminals? See how she puts “non-violent demonstrations” in scare quotes, as if to suggest there is no such thing, since after all, the protesters are lumped together with looters and criminals? She acknowledges that many are protesting peacefully, but in the very next sentence she states that many are “stealing, looting, vandalizing, setting fires,” and so forth.
Ms. Simonian’s prescription for our republic is that she “wishes that everyone would just shut up.” Two paragraphs later, she exhorts us all to “be kind.” Ms. Simonian’s writing plays into invidious stereotypes about people who are publicly demonstrating for racial justice. She does not represent who we are.
Richard M. Oberto, Fresno
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Trump and expectations: Letters to the editor, July 24, 2020."