The Danger of Trump

Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust witness Elie Wiesel wrote, “Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.” Brunhilde Pomsel, secretary to Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, affirms Wiesel’s observation. In a recent documentary, A German Life, Pomsel attributes German acquiescence to Hitler to disinterest.

Indifference to hatred resonates in the popularity of the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Examples abound: Trump’s doubling down on his campaign’s use of a Jewish Star of David superimposed over images of $100 bills, a graphic lifted from a neo-Nazi website; Trump’s frequent retweeting of white nationalist and neo-Nazi messages; Trump’s three times declining to disavow the support of an admitted former Ku Klux Klan member; Trump’s call to ban Muslims from traveling to the U.S.; Trump’s accusation that a Mexican-American judge couldn’t fairly oversee a case against him because Trump regularly rails against immigrants; and the six-week period when Trump led the “birther” movement, questioning our first black president’s American citizenship.

In Donald Trump’s world there are only winners and losers. The losers are those vulnerable to his exploitation, a group that ironically includes his own supporters. Trump appeals to anger and insecurity, issues he intentionally gins up. Lacking substantive solutions, Trump instead implicitly offers the salve, “you’re better than them.” Thus, Trump’s bromide of “Make America Great Again,” an appeal to a time before the realization of rights for blacks, gays, women and the disabled. Substituting demagoguery for remedy, Trump employs dog whistles and scapegoating, abusive ridicule and character assassination.

In 1940 Germany, it was the Jews. Today in Trump’s America, it’s a disabled reporter, an American POW and women he finds unattractive or who menstruate. In one case, Trump accused an opponent’s father of conspiring to assassinate JFK. Lacking character and substance, Trump has no moral qualms.

To voters, Wiesel’s words are a ghostly reminder of the price of indifference in the face of evil.

Len Ziefert

Enfield

Clinton Above the Law

The Washington Post editorial reprinted in the July 11 Valley News opened by praising the Freedom of Information Act: “The principle of holding government to account is at the bedrock of U.S. democracy, and information about government decisions is essential for that accountability.” Indeed, it regarded FOIA as nothing less than a “vital tool for keeping government open and honest.”

Those of us who share this belief look forward to seeing how these papers will reconcile this conviction with their predictable endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president. Perhaps they will qualify their support with the pious expectation that she will mend the ways that have made her so untrustworthy to the electorate. Yet the spots on this leopard may be too resistant to bleach.

Clinton clearly conducted the nation’s business on private computer servers specifically to avoid FOIA access to information and the accountability that would ensue. No rational alternate explanation is plausible. She submits that her choice to use a private server was for the sake of convenience — in hindsight, a mere misjudgment. Really? How could using a .gov account on a secure, government-managed server be more inconvenient than creating a private server and installing it in her Chappaqua home?

It is ironic that her “unreasonable” and “extremely careless” actions, in the words of the FBI, came to light only due to a FOIA request asking the State Department for her emails, which it could not produce. It is for the voters to decide whether Clinton, a Yale Law School graduate with a career negotiating legal corridors, was simply careless or arrogantly could not care less — that rules for others need not apply to her.

In my opinion, the last thing we need is a president above the law, who believes she owes no accountability to the people, or to history.

Newspaper editorials that seek to guide the public’s judgment should bear in mind that Clinton went to extreme lengths to shield herself from accountability and to foil FOIA, the very tool those papers champion as vital to the operation of democracy.

Tim Dreisbach

South Royalton

Help Children in Crisis

Long before the current opioid crisis, children in New Hampshire endured abuse and neglect. The crisis has only increased the number of children who need someone to help them. You could be that person by becoming a volunteer CASA (court-appointed special advocate).

In every case of suspected neglect and abuse, the courts appoint someone to represent the children and focus on their need for a stable and loving environment. As a CASA, you give them a voice in a system that too often relegates children to the periphery of a case instead of putting them front and center.

You do not need any special skills or expertise to be a CASA, just common sense and compassion. Typically, a CASA will spend five to 10 hours a month visiting the children, their parents, teachers and therapists, and attend court every three months until the case is closed (around a year). There will be a once-a-week, five-week training period in New London beginning Sept. 14. Please sign up. You could easily change the life of a child for the better, and you will undoubtedly change your life as well.

For more information or to apply to be a volunteer, visit www.casanh.org or call 603-626-4600.

Steve Klein

Springfield, N.H.

Keep Solar Strong in Vermont

I am writing to express my support for solar in Vermont. As a member of Norwich’s energy committee, I have worked hard over the past five years to encourage homeowners to go solar. Investing in residential solar stabilizes utility costs for homeowners and is a net benefit to utilities and their customers.

However, new rules for how solar homeowners connect with their utility and get paid for their solar contribution to the grid don’t support the continued success of solar. Instead, they threaten to undercut a burgeoning clean-energy industry and make solar unaffordable and difficult for many Vermonters.

I am especially concerned about provisions that could make off-site, community solar projects significantly harder to develop. Community solar projects are the only option for renters and folks who don’t have a suitable roof or open space on their own property. Of the 116 Norwich households that have gone solar since 2014, 46 (40 percent) did so through community solar.

Sure, the Public Service Board has to balance costs and other considerations, but these proposed changes go too far. I hope board members and legislators will rethink and redraft these rules to keep solar strong in Vermont.

Linda Gray

Norwich