Letters to the Editor (Feb. 20, 2025)

They are puppets

Editor:

There are many traits, activities or behaviors Americans find unethical, immoral and/or illegal. They include cheating on taxes, nepotism, cheating a contractor, benefiting financially while holding public office, cheating on your spouse, lying, dodging the military draft if at the time you were called upon to serve your country, assaulting women (or anyone else) sexually or in any manner, and cheating an attorney out of a valid fee for service.

The above are all behaviors, traits or crimes Donald Trump is widely understood or known to have engaged in or committed. Despite his attorneys’ multiple delays under the sclerotic American judicial system, Trump is still a legally convicted felon.

Millions of Americans who say they are Christians admire or love Donald Trump. I must have been raised in an alternate universe of Christian values since neither my family nor church engaged in or gave a pass to any of the behaviors listed above but many churches and their adherents apparently do.

Let this sink in: Donald Trump is mentally unstable. He has and continues to demonstrate this often. He has surrounded himself with yes men and women, hired with the primary qualification of loyalty to him; and like the puppets they are, they publicly support everything he says and does.

Trump now uses his power, unfettered by the spineless members of his cult in Congress, supposedly a separate branch of government, to do whatever he wants.

And the American people are the victims and in many cases the prey.

James Rickey

Los Lunas

Transfer of power

Editor:

We are now in the early days of a new presidential administration, after hearing again that well-worn American phrase “peaceful transition of power.” That transfer is all the more notable when it occurs between opposing political parties.

We’ve done a fair amount of presidential transfer between parties in the last three decades. For a while, we had a presidential party hand off every eight years (Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Barak Obama) and more recently every four (Barak Obama to Donald Trump to Joe Biden to Donald Trump [again]).

This transfer is part of our American tradition. George Washington served only two terms though he could have been president for life. No president served more than two terms until FDR — and now the Constitution limits presidents to 10 years (two years of another’s term and two full terms of their own).

The leader of a world superpower steps aside and hands government over to the opposition? Remarkable. Consider how remarkable it is this year, with the existential character of the last election.

What do I mean by “existential character?” Consider how both sides talked about how their world would cease to exist if the other side won. Candidate Donald Trump talked about the country becoming unrecoverable if he lost. Democrats at Kamala Harris’ convention chanted “we’re not going back.”

Elections being elections, someone wins and someone loses. The winner this time is labeled by some opponents as a threat to democracy, yet the peaceful transfer of power took place anyway. Whether you love or hate whoever holds power today, the fact we can transfer it between opponents peacefully is an American tradition we can all be proud to call our own.

Jonathan Gardner

Los Lunas