The biggest losers
If you support Donald Trump, you may wonder why so many people do not. It would take me more than the 300 words allowed by the Moscow-Pullman Daily News to chronicle a list of his criminal and immoral behavior.
Trump does not believe in the Constitution, does not honor those who died in Vietnam (he has called them "losers and suckers"), nor does he respect those who suffered at the hands of the enemy.
On Jan. 8 at a campaign rally, he mocked John McCain. McCain was tortured by the North Vietnamese. He could not raise his hand above his head. He had an option to be released but refused freedom until all prisoners were released. McCain was a real American hero.
The other heroes of the era are the mothers and fathers, family members and friends who watched the iron door of death slam shut on loved ones. Consider the number who died; 58,220 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese civilian and military casualties. The pain and suffering defy our ability to define. There is no pain index for a broken heart.
War steals from us all. There are so many major problems: global warming; 700 million people living in extreme poverty on $2.15 a day; and the need for new drugs for “super bugs” that kill 700,000 a year. The world cries out for solutions to these and other problems.
Just imagine a world with tens of thousands of more physicians, scientists, researchers, naturalists, leaders, artists, musicians, actors, teachers and peace makers.
The names of the following are famous individuals who have enriched us all: Alex Correl; Albert Einstein; Jane Goodall; Sir David Attenborough; Jonas Salk; Franklin DeLano Roosevelt; Pablo Picasso; Lady Gaga; Paul McCarthy; Alexander Fleming; Anne Sullivan; and Jimmy Carter.
There are names never recorded, achievements never made by those sacrificed to Ares, the god of war. For every life taken in conflict, we are all the biggest losers.
Stan Smith
Viola
Guns but not books?
Looking at the headlines below the fold on a recent front page made me want to bang my head on the table and cry. What has become of us?
The Idaho state legislature wants to pass a law requiring school districts to allow teachers, employees and volunteers to carry guns without any oversight by the school district and without any liability for any actions that they might take. An adjacent article is about how 60% of librarians in Idaho are considering leaving the profession because of the library laws making their way through the legislature, threatening librarians with civil action if someone doesn’t like the way they do their jobs.
So apparently a significant number of legislators trust teachers and librarians with guns but not with books. How did it get so crazy?
Constance Brumm
Moscow
End the killing
Israel, with active U.S. complicity, has managed to do by its genocidal actions in Gaza what the most strident, ugly anti-semitism could not; desecrate the somber memory of the Nazi holocaust and increasing world-wide condemnation and isolation of Israel. Cease fire now. End the killing.
Frank Rodriguez
Moscow
A hallway meeting
I was walking through church last Sunday and came across this young man and we stopped to visit. He was saying, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could use telepathic thoughts to communicate like Spock in Star Trek?”
I laughed and said, “We do that today,” pulled out my cell phone and showed it to him. He looked at me sort of funny with a question in his face.
I said, “Whenever you want, you can talk to or text to any other person, across town, across the U.S., or around the world; and you can say that you love them. What’s the difference?”
We went on in our conversation; “Prayer is the same. Through Jesus to our Lord, you can ask for someone to be healed; the physician does the work, and God our Creator does the rest and puts the cells back together to heal them. You can ask for some situation to be resolved of which you have no idea of how it will end and know that your prayers make a difference. You can send thoughts through prayers for guidance and peace to a friend who is having a bad day, for a person’s heart can hurt as bad if not worse than any physical hurt. It is amazing what we can do in both our physical and spiritual world today if you take the time to step back, clear your mind and look at the big picture.”
The young man laughed and said, “That’s pretty cool,” and skipped on down the hallway.
Fun to turn over in one’s mind. May your day and year be blessed.
Wayne L. Olson
Moscow
Defending democracy
Though I may be described as an optimist, I’m more likely to be sardonic when it comes to human nature and our hold on basic freedoms inherent in a democratic republic such as ours. 250 years is a drop in the bucket, and even Rome fell.
Adam Gopnik in his review of recent books on our politics in the New Yorker stated it more eloquently than I’d ever manage. He says, “When democratic practices are in power, they look boringly normal; it’s startling to realize how fragile they are, and how hard to recover when they’re gone.” Brings to mind the election only 10 months from now.
Many wonder whether the 2024 election will mark the beginning of the end. So many questions hover over the outcome. Will the battle for the presidency result in pandemonium — either way it is decided? Will the vote for women’s rights for bodily autonomy be the deciding factor? What about the crisis for immigrants, how will that factor into the ballot box?
The old rules no longer seem to apply. Nixon would have never thought to run for dog catcher after his illegal wiretapping was discovered, but the likely Republican candidate today would boast and call that peanuts compared to his transgressions.
Just 10 months and we’ll again be seeing what lies in store for this democracy. I’m recalling something about the writers of the Constitution coming out of the Continental Congress and one of them (Franklin? Adams?) stating, "You’ve got your republic … if you can keep it." He had his doubts about human nature and how government by the people and for the people might endure. For now, I will retain my optimism, but I fear Gopnik has it right. He says, “Defending democracy can be a grimmer prospect than it sounds.”
Zena Hartung
Moscow
