Seek Unity, Not Division
The election is over. Donald Trump is our president-elect. We do not have to accept this, but as a country, we need to work with it.
Our country is now in a crisis. If it were Hillary Clinton as our pesident-elect, we would not have to accept it, but we would need to work with it. Our country would still be in a crisis.
We are a nation divided over this election. Our dmocracy has given freedom of choice, and our choice has been protests over hatred, anger, sexism and inequality. As a result, our country is weakened by turmoil, broken by divisions, and our fundamental values are being threatened.
Our country is ripe for another 9/11. Is this what will bring our country together as one? Are we destroying ourselves from within?
We need to find common ground after this election. We need to put our energy into healing our country and moving forward. We need to unify our great nation with dignity and respect.
As individuals, we can be part of a whole when we put our armor on to preserve our God-given liberties versus destroying ourselves from within and letting evil take over because of our differences.
Karen Currier ShepardWest Lebanon
You must be pretty nervous right now, Mr. Trump. Your election touched off four days of furious protest across the nation, and millions have signed a petition to stop your inauguration. More people voted for Hillary Clinton than for you, so you don’t exactly have a mandate. And to top it off, you have no clue how to do your new job.
The way I see it, you have two ways out of this conundrum. First, you could resign right now. That would make everyone happy; liberals would be vindicated, and most of the people who voted for you like Mike Pence better, anyway. Resigning requires some humility, though, and you don’t strike me as the humble type.
So here’s option 2: Put Bernie Sanders in your cabinet. And Tim Kaine. And heck, while we’re at it, why not Hillary Clinton? You know they’re all more qualified than you are to run the country. I’m sure they would be happy to do the tough jobs while you go tweet stuff. The best part is, that sure would stick it to Paul Ryan, and everyone knows how much you love revenge. Don’t panic, Mr. Trump. If you play your cards right, you might actually make it past February without being impeached.
Abigail FlemingBradford, Vt.
How Clinton Seized Defeat
Why did Hillary Clinton lose the election? Before long, a slew of books will appear, throwing out all sorts of theories, some valid, some specious. The core reason, however, was that Clinton was a very poor candidate.
On the surface, she had multiple advantages. The vast majority of the media — print and electronic — were in her pocket. The elites of both parties either backed her or, at the least, didn’t endorse her opponent. She had popular surrogates out campaigning for her. She had popular entertainers performing for her. Yet nothing seemed to work.
At the bottom was her obvious dishonesty. Time after time when the truth could have helped her out, she just tried to lie her way through. From the disaster in Benghazi to the story of her home email server, she just kept fabricating and spinning in an attempt to avoid responsibility.
Another reason was her inability to connect with the people. Voters saw her as cold, distant and humorless. Her rallies were small and lifeless. Few seemed to see that her ratings increased when she wasn’t out campaigning. To be blunt, many people who liked her positions despised her as a candidate.
The constant drip-drip-drip of exposes of her dishonesty from her recovered emails and from Wikileaks didn’t help. Even though the lapdog media didn’t report but a small fraction of what was coming out, they couldn’t totally ignore it. Thanks to alternative media on the internet, the truth eventually got out.
In theory, she should have won in a walk. Yet a deeply flawed real estate developer with zero political experience beat her. That Donald Trump was able to defeat her speaks volumes about her shortcomings as a candidate.
Patrick O’Connor Weathersfield
Going After Elitists
A hallmark of the Trump campaign rhetoric was the use of the word “elitist” or “elitism” to describe people who think, have had any education or believe science is a system of knowledge relied upon for medicine, industrial advances, space exploration and understanding climate change, among other things.
Elitist describes the stupid people who believe in equality for all people — or who reject political positions that rely upon hate speech or on using prejudice as a siren call for a better world.
The word elite can refer to “a select part of a group that is superior to the rest in terms of ability or qualities.” Elitism is sometimes used to denote situations in which a group of people claiming to possess high abilities or who constitute an in-group grant themselves extra privileges at the expense of others. This form of elitism may be described as discrimination. The supporters of our president-elect have now unwittingly just become yet another elitist group.
Marc Thiessen’s op-ed of Nov. 12 (“Sorry, Dems, You Can’t Blame the FBI”) reflects another elitist quality: the special ability to use history incorrectly to form opinions. Thiessen selectively recalls the last eight years of a Democratic presidency, then suffers amnesia about a Republican administration eight years prior that set the stage for the most obstructionist Congress in history. He omitted Barack Obama’s request for congressional approval over and over of a jobs bill that included infrastructure investment. Remember?
Trump pulled off a classic political bait and switch, just like many elite Republican predecessors. He has capitalized on mass historical amnesia, through lies and by pouring gasoline on fear and alienation. He promised to create “millions and millions” — or was it billions — of jobs? Doesn’t matter; non-elitists don’t have time for snobby mathematics and economics or history. We should just stop funding education. That will save billions, maybe zillions.
Donna Doel BascomNewbury,Vt.
Swap Was a Success
We write to express our gratitude for the great success of the recent Fall-Winter Swap (Nov. 5-6 in White River Junction). Donations (379 bags) and participants (316) far exceeded previous swaps.
Of course, record donations require extra hands, and many volunteers stepped up to meet the challenge. Thanks are due to all of them, as well as to the Bugbee Senior Center, the Co-op Food Stores, the Upper Valley Food Co-op, Revolution and Budget Print, for their support. We warmly appreciate our community’s enthusiasm for this important event, which manages to clothe so many people without any money changing hands.
Betsy Alexander Upper Valley Community Clothing Swap Lebanon