Letters to the Editor: Trump 01.26.17

No Longer Cowed

January 22, 2017

Springs

Dear David,

I don’t write many letters to newspapers, but when I read your rude editorial from last Thursday, “Not a Role Model,” I just had to reply.

I was stunned by your hysterical and irresponsible editorial. I was also stun­ned by your staggering hypocrisy. Let’s deal with the hypocrisy first.

The definition of presidential role models was rewritten by William Jefferson Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama. The 42nd president, Bill Clinton, and his sexual conduct in the Oval Office with a teenage intern altered forever the standards for acceptable presidential conduct. His misogyny, to use your word, was and still is well documented. A role model for your children? I hope not. 

Next, let’s discuss the 44th president, Barack Hussein Obama, and his own admission to not only personally using cocaine but to selling marijuana as well. Another terrific role model for your children? To use your own words, these two Democratic presidents present “shockingly poor role models. . . .” Hypocrisy, anyone? Selective moral outrage? Disgusting.

You then brand President Trump with the left’s usual laundry list of accusations, concluding that these tired descriptions disqualify him from leading this diverse nation. I don’t know how to say this, but that pony already left the barn. Trump won. Or, to quote President Obama, “We won, you lost.” Or let me quote Democratic bumper stickers from eight years ago: “He won, get over it!”

Now I must say I am also impressed with you trying to get ahead of the curve concerning the upcoming local elections, once again branding (as you did Congressman Lee Zeldin) any Republican that does not denounce our new president as being unable to “present themselves as leaders of one of this town’s two major political parties.” Nice try, but The East Hampton Star’s unveiled hostility to Republican candidates is historically documented. Your paper has become a regular East End Mother Jones on that matter. 

Let’s remember that a few years back, The Star refused to endorse a reform candidate businessman for supervisor, instead strongly backing the candidate whose main staff member, after the election, was led out of Town Hall in handcuffs. Your endorsement helped lead to a close re-election that ultimately saddled struggling taxpayers with a scandal and a budget that was over $30 million in the red, and which we all will be paying off for decades to come. So, your threat against local Republican candidates is laughable. 

What you and the rest of the hard left and the gaggle of protesters don’t want to understand is that Trump voters are no longer cowed by your angst, tantrums, and false accusations. For many years, and in particular these past eight years, we have been called horrible and insulting names. We were called “deplorable” and “irredeemable” just a few months ago by presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, another great role model who simultaneously and oddly was asking for our votes. We have been accused of the vilest things just for being Conservatives, Republicans, or Tea Party supporters — or even just daring to disagree with Democratic orthodoxy. 

 Trump won in large part because he was the flak-catcher for millions of us. Rather than recoil and retreat when vilified, he fought back. His voters were and are empowered by his defiance. Now just between you and me, and don’t tell anyone, I am going to let you in on a little secret. The left’s continued outrageous behavior and accusations against us and Trump now energize all of us even more. We transform your continued destructive negativity into our constructive positivity. We revel in our newly found power. So keep it up and knock yourselves out. March about in dizzying distress, because President Trump and his supporters will only get stronger with each assault.

The good news is that in spite of what I have written above, it is still my hope that things will settle down in our country and particularly in our community, and we can find some common ground of civility in order to move forward in a peaceful and productive manner.

Regards,

DONALD KING CIRILLO

False Indignation

Westhampton

January 20, 2017

Dear Editor,

It’s Inauguration Day and protestors are rioting in the street. The liberals are upset and still whining over their stunning loss so they decide to attempt destructive chaos in the streets of D.C., how pathetic. By claiming that Donald Trump is not the legitimate president they have allowed their protests to turn to violence, with reckless disregard to how well our electoral process truly works. 

Initially our framers were concerned that if the president were decided by the popular vote, there would not be sufficient information on the candidates outside of their own state, and people would be inclined to vote for their own favored son. This natural inclination would create two obvious scenarios that the framers were concerned with; at worst, no candidate would ever receive the popular majority, or at best, the most populous states would have their own candidates elected without consideration to the smaller, less populous states.

This, and how to account for slavery, were prevailing factors for the creation of the Electoral College, whereby the slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person, which gave the South a huge advantage, since slaves did not vote but their numbers were used in determining the number of electors.

Slavery is no longer the issue, but the most populous states would still control the elections were it not for the Electoral College. States like Wisconsin and Michigan, which had such a determining effect in this election, would never have a say in the process were it not for the Electoral College. This is an oversimplification but cuts to the heart of the matter.

For those who are offended by this, they should realize that we are not a democracy and were never designed as such. America is a democratic republic, the primary difference being, in a democracy a simple majority disenfranchises the remainder of the populace, whose civil rights are now granted by a condescending majority. It is only the majority that is sovereign in a democracy. In a republic, the rights of the minority are still protected and still maintain their sovereignty. In a democracy, the minority is ruled by a dictatorship of the majority. Socrates was executed by a democracy, not because he harmed anyone but because the majority found him insufferable. In a republic, a jury must be 100 percent in agreement in order to convict.

Sadly, today demonstrates once again how wise our founding fathers were and how little our general voting public knows or understands about our system of government. It has also often been argued that the Electoral College was also instituted in part to protect our system from the general ignorance of the poorly educated populace of the time. I think that notion has been well evidenced during today’s inauguration demonstrations and events leading up to them.

The Democrats have been bemoaning the email hacks at the D.N.C. and Russian interference with our election process. What I want to know is, why would anyone presume, even for a moment, that Russia wasn’t interfering with our elections? That’s what nations do; the U.S.A. has been complicit in swaying elections all over South America and in places around the world. We were even caught hacking Angela Merkel’s cellphone, someone who’s a very strong U.S. ally, and yet there was no liberal outrage then. 

What is lost in all this false indignation fostered by the media is what was actually in those emails. The D.N.C. unabashedly rigged their own primary elections to install Hillary Rodham Clinton, whereby exit and entrance polls did not even remotely coincide with the actual voting machine tally in many districts — yet no liberal outrage there. Bernie Sanders subsequently rolled over like an obedient puppy dog and took one for the team, and the socialist far left got burned. 

Hillary lost the election by death of a thousand cuts, and there was far more in those email hacks that was incriminating that the media deliberately overlooked. Any reasonable person should find her actions suspect, inappropriate, and gross negligence. Any reasonable person would also recognize that H.R.C. was not your everyday person and was presented as the eminently qualified candidate to be president of the United States, and yet she failed to observe the most basic protocols to national security. Any reasonable person would also recognize the double standard of justice applied, that were any Army G.I. to do the same egregious mistakes with their email they would be jailed or dishonorably discharged. Consider the submariner who texted his girlfriend pictures of the inside of a nuclear submarine and was sentenced to a year in jail. H.R.C. was emailing classified information and barely gets a slap on the wrists. 

Amidst all this hyped-up outrage over the hacked emails, President Obama just granted clemency to Chelsea Manning for leaking classified military secrets that have been proven to have severely compromised certain military actions and our soldiers’ safety. I cannot even fathom how one justifies this while lamenting the hacking of the D.N.C. and Hillary’s own severely compromised cybersecurity system, while ignoring all the dirt it revealed. These revelations were mostly swept under the rug by a biased media and an inattentive or misguided public. 

Furthermore, it continues still for those who are not paying attention because of all the focus on the Trump inauguration; the Clinton Foundation is closing its doors and is firing 22 staffers. The reason should be abundantly obvious: Hillary’s cash cow has dried up and the checkbooks have been slammed shut. Yes, that veritable geyser of foreign funds that was the secret suds to this laundry mat called the Clinton Global Initiative has dried up. It will no longer be sucking money from wealthy patrons or tyrannical dictatorships. Now there is something to protest about. Where has all that money gone?

Respectfully,

JOHN PORTA

His Personal Agenda

East Hampton

January 14, 2017 

To the Editor:

Trump is an agent for the Russians! The Russians have been cultivating him, have compromised him, and will enrich him monetarily. 

Might sound like Roman Polanski’s fictional film “The Ghost Writer.” When this film was completed, and just before its release, Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in September 2009 due to a sudden request by the U.S. Justice Department. He touched a nerve. The movie premiered on Feb. 12, 2010, at the Berlin Film Festival while Polanski was under detention in Switzerland. The final denial by Swiss authorities to extradite Polanski, and his release from detention, came in July 2010. The plot of Polanski’s film “The Ghost Writer”: A British prime minister is recruited and run by the C.I.A.

Fiction? “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.” (Mark Twain, “Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World.” Hartford American Publishing Company, 1897.) 

Many presidents and prime ministers came to office with wealth, but some came with nothing and left with nothing. All the following figures are approximate and in today’s dollars. Eisenhower was the first president to make money while in office, about $8 million. Washington took the job already having the equivalent of $500 million. Reagan left office broke, and had to rely on speaking engagements and the largess of friends to make himself whole. Before Trump, Kennedy was the wealthiest president with $100 million, and only because he did not inherit his father’s $1 billion. 

Trump’s bringing a few billion, which makes him number one. The question is, will his presidency be just a continuation of his desire to build a personal dynastic fortune? After all, he has no public service experience, wealth is what he has worked for all his life. Putin came to office with nothing, a former civil servant who was paid in a currency that was nonnegotiable outside the Soviet Union. As of this writing, Putin’s estimated net worth is $40 billion. 

Trump will try to accomplish what he has always wanted, to build a new American dynasty, to surpass his father and even his own expectation of what is possible in monetary accumulation. Money is artificial, and its worth is derived not by gold reserves, but by the economic strength, stability, and security of the sovereign nation issuing it, which is why Putin’s wealth is in everything except Russian rubles. 

We, the United States of America, are estimated to have 22 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Trump’s dilemma: Either buy gold, abandon us, and attempt his own personal agenda of wealth accumulation, or continue to make the United States the economically strongest, most stable, and most secure country on earth. It’s a no-brainer, and if Trump accomplishes the latter he’s worth $40 billion.

WALTER JAMES BLUMBERG

Dissent and Confusion

Noyac

January 23, 2017

Dear David,

Listening to press secretary Sean Spicer and senior adviser Kellyanne Conway telling the nation to stop mocking Trump and presenting blatant lies as “alternative facts” is a travesty. They are sowing dissent and confusion — shades of Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdogan.

It is also a danger to the future of a free press when top government officials, including the president, both ridicule and threaten it for presenting what is clearly verifiable information.

Trump has mocked so many during his campaign, including disabled veterans and minorities, and continues to rant and rave like a spoiled child in his Twitter blasts. Perhaps his acolytes should redirect their attention to telling Trump to stop mocking the American people.

ED JABLONSKY

Alternate Facts

Montauk

January 23, 2017

Dear David,

It took a while, but I finally figured out the meaning of Herr Trumpf’s use of “bigly” and “unpresidented.” I recently saw a televised conversation between Trumpf and the much-maligned Billy Bush in which Trumpf expressed admiration for the “bigly” butt of Kim Kardashian. Trumpf went on to lament the fact that because he does not have bigly hands, he was unable to grope her buttocks. Based upon what I have seen of Ms. Kardashian, I have to deduce that “bigly” is an adjective that means “big” or “huge.”

Trumpf’s use of “unpresidented” is a little more problematic. It may well be that the Wharton-educated, most brilliant man in the universe does not know how to spell “unprecedented.” It could also be a Freudian slip that reveals how Trumpf views the legitimacy of his presidency. It would be difficult to decide if the former has more merit than the latter, but perhaps both the former and latter are true.

On a recent “Meet the Press,” the American public got even more bizarre Trumpftalk from surrogates. On Saturday, press secretary Sean Spicer mounted the White House podium to castigate the press for failing to tell the American people that Trumpf’s inauguration was the best attended in American history. On Sunday on “Meet the Press,” Kellyanne Conway, presidential adviser and former campaign chief, defended Spicer by claiming that he was merely presenting “alternate facts.”

I was not aware that there was such a designation as “alternate facts.” To any rational human, an “alternate fact” is a euphemism for a lie. However, for those Americans who do prefer the news of an “alternate universe,” I highly recommend O’Reilly’s and Hannity’s not-quite-the-news shows on Fox. Both are highly recommended by the great free-thinker Joseph Goebbels.

BRIAN POPE