Editor:
Dennis Scales says Trump’s policies will put us on a “solid fiscal path” (Mailbox, May 8). Yeah, sure; but seriously, why would anyone support Trump? He’s not smart, attractive, compassionate, likable or inspiring; he’s maybe amusing, in a dumb, crude way, but not someone you’d loan your car to, let alone vote for. Yes, the same kind of racists and dopes liked Nixon, Wallace, Reagan, Bush, etc., but they like Trump more. And remember, Nixon and Wallace were smart, Reagan and Bush had capable handlers, none of them ranted on about pop stars, trophy wives or characters from old movies, and they all understood that the president is supposed to at least pretend to be statesmanlike. Trump doesn’t know or care about anything except money, golf, TV, flattery and revenge. So why is he more popular? Must be smartphones or TikTok, or something.
But then again, all Americans have been subjected to a regime of all-encompassing propaganda designed to turn us into loyal servants of a settler-colonial oligarchy that was founded on crimes dwarfing those of Hitler or Stalin, and which maintains neo-colonial rule over most of the world. Given that, we can’t really blame the Trumpers for lacking the intellectual and/or moral fortitude to resist that propaganda the way we progressives have; it’s not their fault for being so dumb and cowardly. Moreover, since it’s always the bien pensant liberals who really impede the unfolding of history by dulling the point of the revolutionary spear, isn’t it those who fall for Trump’s absurd lies who are more likely to be the (unknowing) agents of positive change? After all, what has revealed the moral contradictions of capitalism more perfectly than Trump’s tweet about Springsteen’s “atrophied” skin?
Bill Hassler, McKinleyville
This article appears in Humboldt Crabs Baseball.
“The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. “