I am a New Hampshire voter like many of you, but as the wife of a career Foreign Service officer, I have lived much of my life outside of our country. We spent years behind the Iron Curtain — in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Romania. We also lived in India, Nepal, and in Chile, under Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship.
For so many of these years, the people we came to know lacked the freedom to vote, or to travel beyond their borders, and often would put their lives in jeopardy when they came to visit our residence. But they would come anyway. Frightened, threatened, still they came — for them we were the United States! They looked to us as their model for everything that was good — freedom of speech, of worship, of movement, freedom from want, freedom from fear, respect for diversity. Sound familiar? Our friends from all over the world take our freedoms and our values very seriously.
Freedoms and values like these, and the commitment to promote them, are emphatically not what candidate Donald Trump is about. Does he know what it cost the Chilean people to win back their democracy from Pinochet? Does he have the foggiest notion of what it will take to deal, starting in January 2017, with China, with the struggling European Union, with the overlapping conflicts in the Middle East? Does he have personal knowledge of the leaders of even a fraction of the 112 of our global neighbors visited by his opponent as secretary of state? Is “neighbor” even a concept he resonates to?
Some voters understand Donald Trump’s total unsuitability to be our president and leader of the free world, but are tempted to turn to the Green or Libertarian candidates. Such a choice could well be a vote for Donald Trump.
Our country’s future — indeed, the future of the international order — are at stake. The world’s people, who have come to expect dependable, balanced and intelligent leadership from the United States, would find it incomprehensible to wake up on Nov. 9 to headlines announcing Donald Trump as president of the United States.
Please vote for Hillary Clinton!
Betsey Barnes Lebanon
David Horsey’s Forum letter (“Facts Don’t Matter For Trump Supporters,” Sept. 29), ignores the hundreds of lies and half-truths that I believe Hillary Clinton has told in her career and have been documented. There is a difference between just being wrong and telling flagrant lies. Each candidate has been guilty of both, Clinton while on the public payroll. Is anyone concerned about an Inspector General finding that $6 billion was lost by the State Department, most of it while Clinton was in charge? See washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/4/state-dept-misplaced-6b-under-hillary-clinton-ig-r/ .
Rather than pretend that Clinton would make a better president because …well, she’s not Trump, perhaps one could provide your readers with a list of her actual accomplishments that didn’t involve getting elected, avoiding prosecution, adding to the unrest in the Middle East, or pulling the wool over the eyes of millions of Americans. Her tired policy ideas are more of the same old tricks out of the Democrat playbook. They have never lived up to the promised prosperity and never will. While Clinton has never done anything other than talk about job creation, Trump has been doing just that for decades.
No, I’m not angry, peeved, ignorant or petulant. I’m not even a fire-breathing Trump guy. Frankly, Gary Johnson is preferable to either Trump or Clinton. However, I am an economic realist who can see the difference between a preening show horse and a work horse that might actually be useful.
Dick Tracy Sharon
Almost Un-American Thinking
Columnist Steve Nelson betrays something almost un-American in his thinking, when he categorically states that church is “where religion belongs” and presumably not beyond (“You’re Not a Victim If You Discriminate,” Oct. 2). America’s founding premise of religious freedom was exactly the opposite … that it can be pursued freely, without confines to place or time as well as sect. For many still, religion is central to how they live and not something that happens locked inside a building for an hour on Sunday.
Nelson is wrong to chastise those he labels the gentle, gray agents of intolerance, not for their intolerances but because they lament the loss of their own freedom. Nelson states nothing in contemporary politics deprives or seeks to deprive religious Americans from living in accordance with their faith. Wrong. Per Nelson, they are not coerced into abortion; what of attempts to make them pay for abortions of others? Per Nelson, religious Americans are not forced to use contraceptives; what of the politics that would force them to pay so that others might use contraceptives? He says they are not inhibited from praying in the public square … this is not always true. We certainly cannot risk offending the non-believers.
Using Nelson’s own logic, no one was required to purchase wedding services from the Odgaard family cited in his column. Nevertheless, the Odgaards were required to deliver those services, even within their privately-owned building. Forcing people to take actions contrary to their religious beliefs is the ultimate intolerance. Which is the greater evil … asking a gay couple to find an alternate service, or forcing the Odgaards to choose between their religion and their livelihood? While the Odgaards may be wrong to discriminate in denying a service to some of the public but not others, please do not regard as tolerant victims those who forced them to do so.
As to another letter writer who suggests we spend more time studying candidates instead of voting for none-of-the-above, I have studied them all thoroughly. A vote in protest may be wasted, but it is not the same as giving up the right to vote, for which we agree our countrymen have given their lives.
Tim Dreisbach South Royalton
Plan B for the GOP?
So, why are the top GOP brass dragging their feet in not condemning Trump for his everyday bloopers, his offensive, immoral character, his inability to do the job … and foremost, for his hustler, con man business history? No matter what outlandish lies he continue to spew, the leaders of the GOP continue to endorse him. How is that possible?
If Trump wins in November … yes, things are that crazy … could it be that the clever GOP has a plan B? Yes! The answer is right there to see.
Give Trump enough time to perform, “a la Trump,” and enough rope to hang himself, the GOP-led Congress will make the move to impeach the impeachable Trump.
That leaves the reliable Mike Pence, a true conservative in the White House.
Al Stevens Cornish
Time for a Hero
It’s good to be reminded about all the awesome work that comes out of the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth (“CHaD Runner Fights Child Abuse,” Oct. 6) and the importance of the CHaD Hero event as a fundraiser for such programs. The staff truly are heroes, as are the courageous kids fighting through very tough circumstances.
Inspired by CHaD’s Child Advocacy Center and its work with child abuse, my family will be running in the CHaD Hero fundraiser on Oct. 16 for the first time of many. With all the negative news we are constantly bombarded with, CHaD Hero is an opportunity to do some good and have some fun doing it!
Diana Krass Norwich