If we elect Trump again, we’re the suckers, losers
Having had the privilege to doctor and befriend ex-POWs for 10 years, seven years of which included all vets from WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the first Iraq War, I can say with certainty they don’t
fit Donald Trump’s definition of “suckers and losers.”
Rather, Trump fits Montague’s comment, “War hath no fury like a noncombatant.” America once fought when attacked—now presidents initiate wars like the Korean, Vietnam and second Iraq war with Congress’s silent complicity which result in stalemates. Young men and women who fight and die or are maimed mentally and physically are noble “suckers and losers” because they love our country.
Rudyard Kipling (Gunga Din fame) wrote his best poem after his son’s death on the Western Front in WWI. “If any question why we died, tell them because our fathers lied.”
My wife and I voted against Trump, but thought he deserved a chance (horse manure works for brains when you’re lucky). With his four years of verified lies, dissing allies, denying climate change,
disregarding environment, sucking up to Putin and Kim Jong-un, ignoring science, ignoring law, lying about and dismissing COVID-19 while killing 190,000 Americans, he’s blown it. We’re the true suckers and losers.
Jerrold E. Johnson
Bozeman
Where are real conservatives when U.S. needs them?
Conservative values have traditionally included small government, law and order, and fiscal responsibility. Under this current chaotic administration, conservatives’ values have turned upside down.
Trump is threatening that if Biden is elected there will be violence in the streets and suburbs. But, after four years of his own administration, that is exactly what we have now, protests in almost every state, people being shot in the street, gangs waving their guns to intimidate anyone with whom they disagree.
Fiscal responsibility, meaning cutting government spending, has been overturned by the brazen and ineffective tax cut for the richest people and corporations in the country (ineffective only if you
believe it was supposed to help all citizens). We now have the largest budget deficit ever and no end in sight.
Small government has not happened either, unless it is in the federal government’s lack of leadership in the COVID pandemic. Instead we have ICE agents separating children from their families
with no effort to reunite them, and reaching into homes to deport people who have lived here peacefully for 20 years. Federal agents are inserting themselves into cities to quell peaceful protests, inflaming them in the process. The administration is coercing compliance by threatening to defund cities who don’t bow to its will. We have a virtual takeover of the courts by a Department of Justice that is acting as the president’s protector.
I respect conservatives’ honorable views. Conservatives and liberals should be able to share their views and come up with conclusions that benefit our whole country.
What I cannot respect is giving up longheld values to blindly follow an administration bent on turning our republic into a dictatorship. Where are the conservatives who should be defending the country against loss of even their own values?
Faye Boom
Bozeman
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letters to the Editor 9/22/20