Editor:
Lauri Rose thinks I sounded a little fascistic in writing that the lesson of Trump’s victory is the voters are “too dumb” to see through the Republicans’ obvious lies and appeals to racism (Mailbox, Dec. 26). She thinks the voters are just deprived, not depraved, because they didn’t get proper schooling or whatever, and that I was being flippant and/or mean. Maybe so, but the fact remains that more than half the voters must either be pretty damn dumb — since anyone with a lick of sense could see Harris is smart and accomplished and Trump is a self-regarding moron who couldn’t run a lemonade stand — or else, and even worse, so racist and mean-spirited that they prefer a crude, ignorant racist.
Also, I did cite, as a mitigating circumstance for the electorate’s failure, the fact that lots of “smart and evil people” worked overtime to trick them into voting for evil creeps. l don’t think that was a particularly fascistic thing to say.
So yes, I was being sarcastic, but more in sorrow than in anger. Like all good progressives, I’d like to believe the people will inevitably rise up in their righteous anger and throw down the evildoers, but they never seem to do it. Not even when all they’d have to do is vote for a moderate progressive over a racist idiot. And again, say what you will about our horrible schools and our viciously unfair economic system, one needn’t have read Marcuse or practiced yoga to understand that the guy spouting racists lies and threats is the “baddie” and voting for him makes you bad, too.
Bill Hassler, McKinleyville
This article appears in Through Mark Larson’s Lens 2025.