To the Editor:
Margaret Porter’s letter of June 19 (“Please love your country, whoever is president”), while obviously heartfelt, states that Donald Trump was elected by “a big majority.” In fact, he won by a mere 1.5 percentage points, the fifth slimmest winning margin in the 32 presidential elections held since 1900. Ms. Porter also faults the Democrats for holding nationwide protests on the same day as Trump’s celebratory Army parade: “Couldn’t that have been done any other time?” to which I would reply “No, the one absolutely necessitated the other.”
As a U.S. Army veteran who's about to turn 79, I was initially disgusted by President Trump’s decision to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday by hosting a military parade on his own 79th birthday. He is, after all, a draft evader who has openly mocked WWII fallen soldiers as “suckers” and “losers.” However, I must admit I found the televised parade surprisingly lowkey and entertaining, nothing on the scale of Soviet-era or North Korean tyrannical regimes.
Still, Donald Turmp has demonstrated, time and again, that bullying and intimidation are his calling cards. It’s common knowledge the United States is the world’s preeminent military power, by a long shot: Our military spending is more than the next 10 countries combined, and we possess four of the world’s five largest air forces. We don’t need to flex muscles to show the rest of the world how tough we are. What we do need is to show some basic compassion and humanity (dare I add “humility”?) to those who aren’t lucky enough to possess the privileges and freedoms that we Americans have, and too often take for granted.
Like the rest of us, I don’t know how many more birthdays I have left to celebrate. But, for me, one thing Is absolutely certain: as long as the Trump administration continues its assault on our democracy, I will continue to protest – even if it’s not by “taking it to the streets” in peaceful marches, as I was once physically capable of doing.
Peter Carney
Warwick
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