These are troubling times. Despite a robust, growing economy with historically low unemployment and inflation coming down from highs created by a worldwide pandemic, tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and exorbitant corporate profits, American voters made a change.
Donald Trump, a convicted felon, appeals to the worst among us and even the worst tendencies of some good people among us. He and his closest followers are following the same playbook used by a small man with a strange mustache in Germany during the 1930s and ’40s.
They are not what I know to be Republicans, nor true conservatives. They are certainly not patriots who believe in what America stands for as spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
To those of us who are troubled by the actions of our newly elected president and his minions, I quote Richard Goodwin, an aide, adviser and speechwriter for John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy during the 1960s: “Some have called upon us to mute or stifle dissent in the name of patriotism and the national interest. It is an argument which monstrously misconceives the nature and process and the greatest strength of American democracy ... It is not our privilege but our duty as patriots, to write, to speak, to organize, to oppose any President and any party and any policy at any time which we believe threatens the grandeur of this nation and the well-being of its people. This is such a time.”
Mr. Goodwin was speaking of the increasing involvement of America in the Vietnam War, but his words ring true today in these perilous times and of this most dangerous man now leading our great nation toward a very dangerous future.
Editor’s note: This writer is using a pen name. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.
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