The following article was submitted by Paul Cully. Submitted articles do not necessarily reflect the views of WestfordCAT or its Board of Directors. To submit your own article, letter or response, e-mail news@westfordcat.org
I was eating an English muffin when I read Mr. Galvin’s letter, urging Republicans to rally around and support Donald Trump for President. I choked on the muffin.
Mr. Galvin asserts that:
The mainstream media is working for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yet the mainstream media has given far more “airtime” to Donald Trump. Without the mainstream media’s fixation on reporting everything Donald Trump, we would hardly know he exists.
“His [Mr. Trump’s] clear and unequivocal articulation of the issues facing the nation … is compelling evidence of his capability to govern.” It is one thing to articulate issues, and quite another to propose solutions. And the very few solutions that Mr. Trump has proposed are vaguely stated, often altered, often absurd, and lack meaningful substance.
“His record of business accomplishments … is compelling evidence of his capability to govern.” Several of his businesses have failed, and some of the others are scams on an unsuspecting populace. And his treatment of individuals and contractors who have worked on his real estate developments is deplorable – hiring of undocumented workers, refusal to pay standard wages or for legitimate overtime, complete failure to honor contractor agreements – the list goes on and is long. The Trump story is not one of business success, but one of elitism, arrogance, and bullying.
An HRC victory “would complete the attack started against American values, economic prosperity, and national security begun by her predecessor.” Mr. Trump has denigrated women and all non-white races so many times that it has become part of his mantra. Are his racism, xenophobia, and bigotry the “American values” we should admire? When the current administration began, we were losing close to one million jobs per month; now we are adding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month and the unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in more than a decade – regardless of how you measure it. How does that attack “economic prosperity”? National security is threatened by U. S. foreign policies that fail to acknowledge that garrisoning troops in 75% of the nations on the planet antagonizes and alienates the indigenous peoples of those countries, and fails to acknowledge that decades of war has neither brought peace nor security to America – a Trump presidency would exacerbate that.
Mr. Galvin excuses Mr. Trump’s language as merely being “outspoken” in an “American culture that has become so ‘politically correct’ that the tradition of speaking frankly and freely is being lost.” If the repetition of racial and ethnic slurs, denigration of women as second class citizens, rude and classless insults directed at anyone who disagrees with anything he says, and an absence of compassion and a disregard for the human condition in America and around the world constitutes “speaking frankly and freely”, then we are well served by losing that form of speech.
Make no mistake, for any person or any political party to rally around Donald Trump for President is to advocate for the worst for America.
The current Republican and Democratic nominees for the office of President set the standard for suitability to lead our nation at a level that is a new low. It is hard work to imagine worse. No informed voter, conservative, liberal, progressive, or otherwise, would vote for either one. Now is the time to advocate and support a third party – one that represents the people of America. The Republicans and Democrats at the national level have failed us.
