Donald Trump and maga Republicans lack honor and cannot be trusted - Impeach Trump Now Senator Susan Collins alert!

Echo opinion letters published in the Los Angeles Times:

To the editor: (“Trump isn’t interested in being honorable — he’d rather be feared,” January 13).

Echo Los Angeles Times opinion letter

Jeffrey Goldberg's writings, particularly in The Atlantic, often criticize Donald Trump for lacking honor, focusing on ethical lapses, questionable actions, and disrespect for democratic norms, notably highlighted by his reporting on officials mishandling sensitive military info in a Signal group chat, which revealed a concerning disregard for security and accountability, despite intense pushback from Trump and his allies

Goldberg writes eloquently about the near-total absence of honor in the Trump administration’s actions, particularly in the area of foreign relations. Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland as well as his threats to the governments of Cuba, Colombia and other Latin American countries are totally lacking in honor. This is a sad time for the United States.

I am reminded of the motto of Hollywood High School (class of ‘59): “Seek honor through service.” This is a maxim that I have carried throughout my life. I think that it is certainly one to which Goldberg would subscribe. It is definitely not one to which the current evil Donald Trump administration will support.

From Richard Seligman, in Simi Valley

Echo To the editor: I began crying this morning when I read Jeffrey Goldberg’s most recent column. Goldberg’s point is that Trump associates power with respect, but that type of respect has dirty underpinnings. It is about crushing the lives of others, all for your own material advancement. How is Trump any different from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has attacked Ukraine for years now❓ Seemingly nothing will stop either leader.

So why did I cry❓ The idea of attacking Greenland hits at the debasement of human value and at the loss of regard for the sovereignty of other nations. People become bugs to be swept away. The drive for access to money sources blinds all. I feel shame. 

I feel pain for those who are losing their ability to live their lives with true respect.

We have curdled our humanity and corrupted our morality. That makes me weep.😰 (Senator Susan Collins alert❗- Where is she❓*)

From Gwen Rigby, in Santa Barbara, California

#ImpeachTrumpNow

#SenatorSusanCollins (Maine's Senator in exile) ❗

Elon Musk uses chaos and cruelty under the false guise of creating government efficiency but his schemes meet resistance

Echo opinion letter published in the Los Angeles Times and in Yahoo.com

To the editor: If the chief executive of any private company were to conduct a "downsizing" as chaotically and cruelly as Elon Musk has as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, he would be fired. ("Key agencies tell workers not to respond to Musk email demanding to know what they did last week," Feb. 23)😕😟😖😳

Consider Musk's record: Indiscriminate mass firings of employees without regard to qualifications or performance; absurd demands that Pentagon supervisors produce lists within days of thousands of civilian employees to be fired; insulting requirements that government employees explain what they have accomplished in the last week, under threat of termination if they don't; and clueless terminations of employees who safeguard our nuclear arsenal (oops).

In the face of criticism of this scorched-earth🔥 destruction of the federal workforce (will anyone ever want to work for the government again❓), Trump and his wingman Musk mug for the crowd with chainsaws and send out demeaning cartoons on X/ oblivious to the anxiety, fears 😭and uncertainty of each and every one of those fired employees.

No normal CEO would ever survive such a show of incompetence and cruelty.   Brian Gough, Santa Barbara, California 

Trump charmers are duped into supporting their naracissistic GOP nominee

Echo opinion letter to the Editor in the Los Angeles Tribune: Trump being on trial charms only his voters. Stop saying it helps him.

Trump Charmers!

To the editor: It has grown tiresome hearing pundits from the right and left suggest that former guy Trump will score points with voters as a result of being a criminal defendant in numerous trials. (“Prosecutors seek more sanctions for Trump as key witness resumes testimony in hush money trial,” May 2)

Which voters will be impressed with someone who shows contempt for the rule of law, sounds more like a wannabe dictator than a president, and exudes the personal charm of a deadly rattlesnake?

President Joe Biden’s voters will not be impressed, and Trump voters will think it’s super keen. Those roughly 10% of voters who are in the middle or undecided — what about them?

Vote Blue 2024!  Vote Biden-Harris 2024

Who in their right mind would vote for a lawless insurrectionist? I am confident those in the middle will, by well over 50%, pull the lever for President Joe Biden, so we can be rid of this narcissist masquerading as a presidential candidate.

From Rich Ellison, Santa Barbara

Libraries are important public resources where free speech is practiced and supported

Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis Doesn’t Want You To Learn About Real Black History

Echo opinion letters published on Yahoo.com:

Gov. DeSantis moves to ban social-studies books. Florida wants to 
whitewash history by refusing to buy social-studies textbooks that teach concepts it deems objectionable.

Echo opinions to protect libraries!

To the editor: I have a question for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been at the forefront of the right-wing culture war against schools and libraries.

Have you met Martha Hickson, who was mentioned in The Times' recent piece on librarians? In case she is under your radar, Hickson is a high school librarian in New Jersey who has come under attack. Where she lives and works, individuals demanded that the libraries be cleansed of books, and hence ideas, that don't meet their definition of safe thinking.

She was quoted as saying, "These people wanting to ban books have a whole political machinery around them, and are using books as proxies to attack people."

Hickson is a person with a clear manner of identifying the true reason for such loud intransigence. She is a "soldier" of a nation that was founded on ideas — ideas such as all people are created equal, and they have the right to express those ideas without politicians twisting the mechanics of democracy to further their own careers.

You could learn something.

Andy Siegel, Santa Barbara, California

Being on TikTok tells young people that “we’re here, we hear you, we feel you,” said Celia Greer, left, a teen coordinator at the Kankakee Public Library, with her colleague Tamara Martinez. Credit...Lawrence Agyei for The New York Times

To the editor: What a contrast — in one article, we read of efforts to control free speech and thought in American libraries, and in another we read about France's efforts to fight racism and build tolerance.

Ours is a very backward country in many ways, and this is one of them.  My mother, as the only woman at the time on the Yucaipa school board, endured similar harassment in 1990, because she supported keeping an English book series that had stories about witches.

This is not about the books. It's about political control to advance an agenda that disenfranchises people and keeps the white Republican male in power.

Sandy Mishodek, Running Springs, California.

Holocaust education is the parallel to Trumpziim

Echo From L.A. Times Studios: World War II survivor Josie Levy Martin recently visited a local high school class and was shocked when none of the students had heard of Adolf Hitler. ❗

Anti-Semitism history must be told: An echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times:

Josie Levy Martin as a child in Montbron, France, during World War II.  (Josie Levy Martin)

Yet, at the same time, millions of Americans believe in election fraud lies. She fears if Americans don’t learn the lessons of the past, history can repeat itself. Levy Martin warns, “If you look away, it will be all the worse.”

When I was a teenager, I asked my father what it was like to live in Germany after Hitler came to power.

“Das kanst du dir nicht vorshtellen” — you cannot imagine it. “At first we thought it wouldn’t be so bad, but some things changed almost overnight. My boss said I shouldn’t visit certain clients because they might not want to do business.”

“But you hadn’t changed!” I interrupted.

“My child, you can’t understand, and God willing, you won’t have to. The boss said he personally didn’t go along with Hitler’s Nazi rantings, but by 1934 we were no longer invited to their Sunday kaffeeklatsch."

I remembered this when a pro-Trump neighbor stopped inviting us to her annual holiday cocktail party.

Prior to 2016, we respected each other’s differing political views, even joked about it. This changed dramatically after I said to her, “But Trump lies.” That was the end of the conversation, and she and her partner retreated to their capsules of collusion, for it is a form of collusion when normal, ordinary people look away from facts.

It was the same collusion as when teachers, lawyers and ministers went along with the Nazi lie that in a pure Germany, Aryan supremacy must be returned to “das Volk.”

My parents left Germany for France in 1935; I was born there in 1938. Too many of our relatives were less fortunate, and they were gassed in the camps.

For a time I wanted to believe that the Nazi era was a “never-again” episode orchestrated by some twisted fascist monsters. I wanted to believe that America had saved Europe from the worst evil in modern times.

Alas, “never again” is now.

I fear not enough good people remember history. Why are so many Republicans on board with Trump, even a year after the January 6, 2021, coup attempt? 

I worry about political things, such as the large number of judges Trump has appointed, but there are also other changes that deeply concern me.

I wonder about doctors who refuse to call COVID-19 the killer that it is, especially of poor Americans and people of color. My grandmother was a victim of the Nazification of medicine. She had leukemia. It was treatable with transfusions that she received regularly at a blood bank in Frankfurt. After the Nuremberg Laws*, she was denied pure Aryan blood. (OMG!) Her oldest son stayed in Germany to donate blood to her even though he had received an exit visa to America. She feared he wouldn’t get out in time.

My grandmother stopped eating so her son would leave. She died.

Where were the good doctors, journalists or judges who could have demanded this cruelty stop? Where were the ruling bodies then?

And where will ours be in 2022, and 2024, if so many election officials have been ousted or quit because they failed to cheat for a would-be fascist dictator? I pray for our democracy, which seems irrevocably on life support.

Josie Levy Martin, Santa Barbara, California

*On September 15, 1935, at a party rally in Nuremberg, the Nazis announced two new laws that changed who could be a German citizen. The Reich Citizenship Law required that all citizens have German “blood.” As a result, Jews and others lost their rights to citizenship, which not only stripped them of the right to vote but also made them stateless. This meant that they could not get a valid passport for travel between countries or acquire a visa to leave Germany.