President’s assualt on democracy no fictional tale

Dear Editor,

I read a recent letter to the editor requesting responsibility in submitted opinions, reminding us that students, especially, should read civil dialogue. Granted. Yet remaining civil in a time of gross incivility tests the restraint of opinion writers. I feel deep anger toward a president who has shirked all responsibility to curb the rampant catastrophe of illness and deaths due to Covid-19, ignored safety protocols to limit its spread over the past 10 months, relying instead on his Warp-speed vaccine.

This president should be held accountable in a court of law for refusing to protect the now more than 300,000 dead in this country. He has lied, spread dis-information, fomented libel and persists in spreading poison into the river of public distrust, undermining the coming presidency of Joseph Biden as fast and best he can.

Literature does an excellent job of civilly addressing the results of a rampant road toward authoritarianism. In Albert Camus’ 1944 play, Caligula, characterizing the 1st C. Roman emperor, he writes, “In his pedagogy of the Absurd, Caligula proceeds to destroy order as it exists…(his) decrees are intended to destroy all sense of preference and discretion, so that wrongness becomes so confused with rightness that neither is meaningful in society.”

Isabell Allende’s 1977 novel, House of Spirits, depicts the rise and fall of the democratically elected, socialist leader Salvador Allende. Her character, Senator Truebo, an authoritarian, conservative champion of the oligarchy, is described as, “a ferocious crusader, ready to battle in forums, press conferences and universities.” When asked to remove himself from office, “(He) replied by slamming his fist down on the presidential desk, knocking down the flag and the bust of the founding fathers. ‘I’m not going anywhere!’…astutely deeming the left were the enemy of the people, years later the slogan of the dictatorship”.

Sound familiar?

Sincerely,

Christine Wardenburg-Skinner

Edison