Letter to the Editor: The Light at the End of the Tunnel

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President Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin Roosevelt in a landslide in 1932 because he did not respond after the stock market crashed. 

He did not lie; he just believed government should not intervene in the economy and so he spoke of “light at the end of the tunnel.” He held fast to his principles and went down with the ship. Hoover is ennobled by comparison to Donald Trump. 

Actually I agree with one thing Mike Kimbrel said in his letter of Sept. 15. The Rev. Jim Jones probably doesn’t’ belong in the same paragraph as Trump. 

Jones was responsible for the death of only 909 of his followers at Jonestown, while Trump’s non-response to the Coronavirus pandemic has directly led to the death of 200,000 (and counting) Americans and the permanent loss of millions of businesses and jobs. 

With no apology to Kimbrel or any other Trump voter, I would contend it is difficult to write about a heinous, nasty liar like Trump in a nice way. 

Trump telling Bob Woodward on tape that “nothing more could have been done,” about COVID-19 is a nasty, scurrilous and deadly lie. Many Democratic countries did much more, quite successfully. For what it’s worth anymore in Trump’s America, that is called evidence. 

Now Trump says he was trying to protect the American people like Winston Churchill protected the British people in World War II. Really? In what alternate universe is Trump saying of the coronavirus, “It’s all a hoax,” and “It will all go away when the weather gets warmer,” the equivalent of Churchill speaking to the British people in 1940 of the road that lay ahead against Hitler: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

How is that the same? Tell me. 



Kimbrel says I insulted Trump voters. Good! Empathy is important! Now he knows how it feels. Trump’s sickening, often vicious, always self-serving lies have insulted the intelligence of thinking Americans for the last four years. 

Trump says a vaccine is near. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Truthful people who know what they are talking about say a vaccine will not be available for wide distribution until sometime in 2021. Trump will put enormous pressure on the vaccine authorization process to cut corners and take shortcuts so he can have a vaccine he says is available by Election Day. Like a demented soap opera dictator who truly believes he is a real doctor, I’m sure he will hold up a vial of something he claims will do the job before Nov. 3. 

In 2015, Trump said he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for him. His mountain of lies has been successful enough at what Abraham Lincoln called “debauching public opinion,” I do believe he could shoot some of his own supporters in the middle of Fifth Avenue and they would still vote for him. 

 

Marty Ansley

Cinebar