Letter to the Editor: Never Before

I’ve lived through the assassination of a president, his brother, an esteemed civil rights leader, and the attempted assassination of another president.

I’ve lived through “take shelter” drills under our school desks during Russian bomb drills, through the Soviet Union’s demise, through the birth of the European Union, and through the reunification of a divided Germany.

I’ve lived through the resignation of both a crooked president and his vice president, with a congressman assuming the presidency.

I’ve lived through a peanut farmer elected president, a father and son both becoming president, a husband and wife being president and president hopeful and the first African-American to serve as our president.

Yet I’ve never before lived through a time when the president of the USA repeatedly lies, gleefully maligns others, plays footsy with the Russians while desecrating our intrinsic “melting pot” beliefs, takes every advantage afforded the rich in our tax code to evade taxes while refusing to release his own tax returns so we know his personal and business entanglements, and is so vainglorious that he prefers to spend his time belittling others instead of learning what he needs to know from experts.

Nonetheless, he’s convinced a good number of decent Americans that his truth is the only truth while contradicting the checks – freedom of the press, a separate but equal judiciary, a timid Congress afraid to challenge his authoritarianism – that balance the onerous powers of government.

The plot thickens and the characters in this chilling horror story twist and turn as the theme of this melodrama becomes more self-evident daily.

But, know this: We Americans are a resilient and progressive people who won’t allow sinister motives or miscreant secrets to be hidden in our closets.

Rev. Bruce H. Joffe, Ph.D.

Sturgeon Bay, Wis.