Dear Editor,
Susan Stone asked in her opinion letter, “Is it just me?” My immediate thought was, “No, Susan, it is not.” You’re just not in Kansas anymore. Like Dorthy in the Wizard of Oz, it feels like we’ve been swept up into another land or country.
I, too, in all my years have not seen anything like it. And it will continue to shock us and feel surreal, thanks to Chief Justice John Robert handing Trump on a silver plat the key to being a king (presidential immunity).
Our founding fathers should be rolling over in their graves. He created his own monster that will come back to bite him again and again. But this is where we are at today.
So is it any wonder, as Susan said, she wakes up each day wondering what Trump will say and do at the decrement of our lives and the future of our children and grandchildren.
As he pushes his agenda forward, it is chilling to watch the mass deportations without due process, elected government officials arrested for doing their jobs, hackers being let into government agencies to steal private information. Trump also claims we are at war with some random countries when it is Trump at war with his own people turning the U.S. military on Americans.
It is endless the harm he is doing. Some in Trump’s administration have even got so far as to say they want to criminalize those who willingly chose to be childless. Does that mean your own doctor will report you? How would that even work? I don’t know. I’ve never lived in a totalitarian country. They don’t even do that in Russia. And that’s saying something!
It’s a fire hose of events and information that is so disturbing, it’s hard to take it all in. And as Susan said, to the point of exhaustion. But maybe that is the point. To wear us down. That is what authoritarian regimes do. Create chaos and mayhem to bring you into submission. My German grandmother’s family knew all about that.
It is so unreal what is happening today, one needs to pinch themselves and ask, “Is this the United States of America?” Where military tanks roll down our streets to flatter our Commander-In-Chief. No different than in Russia and China that use their military might as a political statement to their people.
Trump even wants to ban the flag of Mexico. A country that shares our southern border has shared their culture and flown our flags together for over a hundred year.
But then he’s the boy from Queens who wants to be a king that knows nothing about our country’s western heritage. On for that matter our Constitution that Trump violates over and over and over again.
But thanks to people like Susan Stone and others inspiring opinion letters I have read, letting readers know we are not alone in our political exhaustion.
J.M.
