Letters to the Editor: Trump 12.01.16

Dear Mr. Trump

Amagansett

November 24, 2016

Dear David,

Would you be so kind as to pass this along?

Dear Mr. Trump: Given the reported assets of some of your staff and cabinet candidates, I am submitting my résumé. (What do you have to lose?)

It is clear that you do not require much suitability for the job, so I’d be perfect for a whole lot of senior positions. I was Miss Upright Rigid Paper Box of 1966. (That’s like a Tiffany box, as opposed to your broccoli shrink-wrap.) 

I decorated the Wollman Rink Christmas tree for you. (You owe me $150.) 

My second husband tried to get acting jobs for your second ex-wife.

I have grown superb tomatoes. (Secetary of agriculture?)

I have hiked. (Secretary of the interior?)

I modestly state that I still look better than a 100-year-old rabbit. (Secretary of state?)

I would really go for Homeland Security (No change in deferred action for 700,000 immigrant child arrivals!)

All good things,

DIANA WALKER

P.S. Please replace Steve Bannon (Breitbart) with David Rattray (East Hampton Star).

Make a Statement

Springs

November 9, 2016

To the Editor:

 Seventy-seven years of life and still so many surprises left for me, probably not many as personally affecting as this morning. Certainly not many quite as scary. Who would ever believe that so many women liked the idea that their president-elect enjoyed grabbing wo­men’s privates and being able to get away with such actions because he is wealthy. I cannot fathom who of my friends would applaud having their children demeaned and bullied in their schools as President-elect Trump has set such an example of doing, and enjoying, through most of his verbal exchanges. Nor can I imagine that so many of our local contractors and garden maintenance businesses are so anxious to have the illegal workers they seem to enjoy employing removed from their payrolls during the height of the season when there are no other workers available to keep their clients happy.

I find that I do not feel that I am able to “work along with” the newly elected officials as they try to change my core human-rights beliefs and establish racial profiling programs, or to have to watch women live for months and even years with shame while being denied their right to have an abortion when they have been raped by cruel and aggressive white supremacists.

 Please, those of you who support this president-elect, ask me to leave your restaurants and businesses if I happen to enter. I am quite sure that others who do share my human rights beliefs will be glad of my funds. If you Trump supporters for some reason happen to be invited to dinner at my home, please decline. There would probably be angry words exchanged at some point during the evening, and I would not wish that on any of my other guests. 

I also encourage other Trump non-supporters to take this stand as well. Please do not pretend that this situation does not exist within your social circle. Stand behind your values and make a statement. You will not be losing friends, for how on Earth could you ever be friends with such individuals? Your values have obviously not rubbed off on them. Please remove yourself from a situation in which President-elect Trump’s views might rub off on you.

Nov. 19, 2016: There has certainly been a great deal to think about and ponder during the last two and a half weeks. The scary bits are rising more quickly to the surface and some of them are quite large and menacing. I still have many mixed feelings about those near and dear to me. We have shared many highs and lows over many years, crying and laughing together. And now I am not sure that I know some of my friends at all. How is it possible to sort prejudice into categories of “Yes to those” and “No to these”? Isn’t it still prejudice? 

The idea of internment camps for Muslims is abhorrent to me. Did we not learn anything from the horror and embarrassment of the last time we treated American citizens in this fashion? I will continue to hold to my belief that freedom for all is an American right. It would be good if every one of us reread the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments made to the American Constitution, and tried to live by them. 

Amendment 1 is, for me, the most important: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Amen.

Sincerely,

DAVID WILT (with concurrence of CHUCK HITCHCOCK

Go Sfork’xit!

Springs

November 28, 2016

Dear David:

I love the American electorate, always full of surprises. It gave us Kennedy and optimism, but gave us Tricky Dick and Watergate; it gave us Reagan and the 1989 stock market meltdown, but gave us Billy and a healthy budget surplus. It gave us the Georges Bush, with a disastrous war and economic crash, but gave us our very first black president and strong recovery. And now it gives us the biggest flimflam artist ever. What joy! Not a dull moment, and, after all, what more does one really want from our masters but entertainment? It sure looks like that’s all the 99 percent will get from the new administration, never mind the grandiose campaign promises. (Oh shades of Berlusconi!)

As for us on the South Fork, who had the ill grace to vote overwhelmingly for dull sanity, there is only one path to follow: Take a leaf from our British brethren and go Sfork’xit, just like they are going Brexit!

Sfork’xit, of course, is short for South Fork Exit. Nothing simpler! After all, we are connected to the mainland via Long Island by only three bridges over the Shinnecock Canal. Cut the bridges, and we are an island! Or, taking another leaf from the Brits (“Passport to Pimlico,” a 1948 movie), we don’t even have to cut the bridges, just install passport controls, and there we go — independence.

Look at the advantages: We won’t have to pay federal income tax, or, as is the case now, send to western Suffolk more money and benefits than we receive. We could establish all kinds of revenue-producing tax havens — no need for Swiss banks or other offshore accounts. We could establish a free port with no customs duties. (Think of all the smuggling opportunities, with the continental United States just a stone’s throw away!)

Best of all, we could float the whole South Fork on giant ice floes (a proven technology, albeit for much smaller areas so far, but I am a great believer in American ingenuity) and sail south for the winter months, thus greatly extending the tourist season. What a boon for the economy! For increased pollution! For unruly crowds on our beaches! For traffic jams! For the real estate market! For more air traffic! For some of us to get rich!

Over the years there has been much talk about creating a Peconic County, which would include all of eastern Suffolk. But the recent election has proven that it would not be politically feasible, since the North Fork and the rest of Suffolk County voted for the con man. Not us! He didn’t take us in!

We on the South Fork are very special indeed, even unique, as this election proved. Hence the only rational solution for a bright future: Sfork’xit. Let’s go for it!

I rest my case.

REDJEB JORDANIA

Time to Clean House

Montauk

November 26, 2016

To the Editor:

The election and Thanksgiving are over and it is time to clean house.  We cannot find the messages that matter. So farewell, Upworthy. Unsubscribe, Green People in an Alliance for whatever. No thanks, the Nicethoughts, the Library, the Coalition, the Centers, the Consumers, the Citizens, the Carers, the Concerned. 

We just can’t cope, even though we think you are on our side. So we will start fresh, and perhaps re-click. But for the moment, don’t call us, we’ll call you. Later. Much later, maybe.

Best regards,

JANET Van SICKLE

The Perfect Con

November 25, 2016

East Hampton

To the Editor:

In our recent political history, conning the public has entered a new phase of information mobility. In the 1960s the repetition of the anticommunist mantra was sufficient to generate enough support for the Vietnam War. While communism was real, it was grossly overvalued, and posed a relatively small threat to our existence. The nation bought the line due to the almost total lack of knowledge about Vietnam and communism

The Iraq war, 40 years later, was a more complicated scam. Sept. 11 was near enough for people to connect a real action to a possibly threatening one. Still, it required the fabrication of weapons of mass desteruction to arouse the population to provide the necessary support. The internet provided volumes of information about the Middle East and the reality of war with Iraq, but the government still managed to give its position a measure of substance. Sept. 11, terrorism, Sadaam connect the unconnectable dots.

The 2016 election was the perfect con. Given alternative visions of our future, the country chose the more destructive — and what will prove to be painful — option. White working-class (blue-collar?) people bought the con. They chose someone who recognized their pain and connected a series of dots that were virtually uncontestable. Information, now massively available, was turned upside down by carving and twisting complex ideas into simplistic tweets. Rendering the information as useless.

The con.

Conning a group of people who feel abused requires two parts. (Especially when finding solutions to the abuse and rectifying the problem are a ridiculously difficult option.) First, providing scapegoats and directing blame gives the abused a cathartic relief and energizes their support. By identifying the problem and providing the necessary scapegoats, Trump set his con in motion. Second is creating the illusion that real solutions exist (i.e., creating millions of jobs), even though they were all fabricated. No problem. If everything you say is a lie, then nothing is a lie.

In the perfect con, a circle is created, and each piece of the circle activates some other piece. Trump’s circle includes immigration, terrorism, job loss, and trade agreements. In a tweet, the narrative holds. But in a paragraph it falls apart. Trade agreements are almost always positive. (North American Free Trade Agreement, when analyzed, created U.S. jobs and stimulated the economy.) Ninety-nine percent of terrorist attacks are home-grown, not immigrants. Illegal immigrants don’t take jobs, they are hired by employers who don’t want to pay higher wages, benefits, etc. Hiring illegal workers is a criminal act, essentially not punishable.

Job losses are a function of private corporations not wanting to pay U.S. workers the wages and benefits they deserve. Job losses connected to falling wages is the neoliberal free market scam. Trickle-down means poverty and abuse. Trump used illegal workers, made his goods in China, and screwed his workers. This Republican Congress voted against every bill to create jobs and raise wages. Bravo to the blue-collar white men and woman whose cluelessness will sink them for the next 10 years.

The perfect con gets the buffoon elected and keeps the zero Congress (zero for the value of their work and the number of bills they passed). Zero is the amount of money they should have been paid for what they accomplished. Real change meant electing an all-new Congress and a woman for president.

So, when the jobs don’t arrive, the wall doesn’t get built, the trade agreements don’t change, and we aren’t any greater than we were before his ascension to the throne, one wonders if we will still have the right to scream “lock him up” without suffering a similar fate.

NEIL HAUSIG

There Is No Hope

East Hampton

November 21, 2016

Dear Editor,

In view of the recent spate of silly Trump-supporter letters I was tempted to respond with a disparaging letter about all of it.

However, I realized that there is no hope of changing the minds and votes of those that cannot or will not see the horrendous damage already done by this creature from the deep, Donald J. Trump. To forgive him his despicable conduct is a surrender of every honest feeling one can have about another.

Somehow this cretin has managed to become president-elect, but I still can’t believe he did it legally and properly. Now stories begin to appear that fear is rampant among the public of his carrying out some of the bizarre things he said while campaigning.

He described our major cities and their residents as poor, lazy, worthless, crying out for the help that only he could bring. He wants to replace newspapers and reporters with his tweets, written at 4 a.m. while in his self-absorbed dementia.

And now he comes around with a smile on his face asking for “fair” coverage of his soon-to-be presidency. All the terrible, hurtful. malicious, despicable things he spewed across the country cannot be undone by a mea culpa with The New York Times. The fear of the people about racism, religious freedom, freedom of the press, etc., has grown from the tactics of this man.

The man is a pig. An ignorant, hopeless pig. He has no aim except to line his own pockets; he has no faith except that he is sure that he can fool the American people; he has no compassion because he has never seen any.

As for me, I will never forgive this Donald Trump no matter how many times he walks back the horror he has brought and represents in America.

RICHARD P. HIGER