To the editor:
History refresher: leading up to World War II, a lot was going on in Europe, as thousands of people were being persecuted because of their ethnicity and religion, so it is disturbing to hear so many politically negative remarks being leveled against immigrants in our country and threats of deportation in the evening news. In that WWII scenario, millions of innocent people paid the ultimate price, but America is a different place and a different time.
Whatever else Donald Trump brings to this presidential election, he has our attention and the attention of the world. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer stated in the Aug. 5 Portland Press Herald that “Trump lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value – indeed exists – only insofar as it sustains and inflates him.” Mr. Krauthammer, I later discovered, is a licensed psychoanalyst. Another writer believes that Mr. Trump is a sociopath. Whatever he is, like a tiger, Mr. Trump is never going to change his stripes, no matter how many words are written by Republican ghost writers for him to read.
For an example, I offer his most recent attack on law-abiding Somali people living in Portland and Lewiston, who are here for a better life than what they were subjected to where they were born. The police chiefs in the cities of Portland and Lewiston, as reported in the Aug. 6 Portland Press Herald, declared that crime rates have declined in their communities. Mr. Trump intimated that immigrants bring crime, a specious argument that has also been suggested by Gov. LePage.
Maine prisons today cost taxpayers from $50,000 to $90,000 per year (from Gov. LePage’s webpage) and the prisoners are not from Somalia, but are homegrown here in Maine.
Although Mr. Trump is a wealthy business person, he was nonetheless a big fish in a little pond before entering politics, and that pond is now a huge ocean of sharks and barracudas who dissect every word that is uttered.
How does an ethical and moral human being bankrupt four companies, leaving unpaid contractors hanging, unable to pay their own hardworking employees (plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc.) while walking away with millions? Answer: such a person is neither ethical nor moral, which makes it very difficult to understand why anyone would vote for an individual who would “stiff” a hard worker trying to pay his rent and buy food for his family.
Mr. Trump also admits that he is too busy to read books, magazines, and newspapers, but it is unimaginable that he did not know that the Russian military is already occupying the Crimean Peninsula, after he said that Russia would not do such a thing. Of all the intelligent conservative thinkers in this country, how in the world did Republicans end up with someone who “is inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity” (my father-in-law’s favorite quote)? In this coming November’s election, critical thinking is again of utmost importance.
David Kolodin
Pemaquid
