When will it be demanded that we read only, listen only, speak only to the approved. Dissent will be met with gloom and disappearance. Is there only one side of a pancake? Has honor left us? What of the words duty, honor, country that have shaped the ethos of the United States; do they still reside in us? If not, have we hitched our wagon to a wrong north star like a North Korea?
Bill Hayden
Santa Fe
Act on autism
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put autism back in the headlines, but in New Mexico, our families never had the luxury to look away. In Sunland Park, I’ve spoken with school leaders, district officials and legislators. What’s clear? This is systemic. Children wait months for services. Teachers are exhausted. Families are left to figure it out alone.
If you have a child on the spectrum, make them happy, every day. They have a right to joy, dignity and empathy right now. Awareness is not the goal; acceptance is. And acceptance demands action. Let’s stop admiring the problem. Let’s act.
Eva De Luna
Sunland Park
Rapid toll
Only a few months in and we can’t count the number of deaths and the magnitude of global suffering caused by the megalomaniac President Donald Trump and his Republican sycophants. As we reel from the daily insults to federal employees, women, children, immigrants, trans people and others in this country, it is easy to forget those across the globe that our government has abandoned to death from lack of medical care.
Are Republican lawmakers really so craven they kneel before Trump to keep their jobs, standing by while thousands of federal workers lose theirs? Can they be so cowardly and morally bankrupt that they applaud our new alliances with tyrants? That they support the boy’s club that treats diplomacy as a blood sport and dropping bombs as an opportunity for cool emojis? My heart breaks at the inestimable damage done to humanity and the earth itself. This era of Trump, will truly be a new dark ages.
Charlotte Taft
Glorieta
Bully-in-chief
President Donald Trump has turned former President Theodore Roosevelt’s bully pulpit into a bully’s platform. Let me explain. The first Roosevelt described his office as a “bully pulpit” in the sense of a splendid platform for advocating a cause and persuading his listeners to adopt it. His use of “bully” reflected that word’s original meaning, which was “sweetheart” (See Merriam-Webster).
Trump doesn’t seek to persuade. Like other authoritarians, he commands, and the commands are backed by threats. That fits Merriam-Webster’s definition of a bully as “one who is habitually cruel, insulting, or threatening to others who are weaker, smaller, or in some way vulnerable.” Trump bullies lawyers by threatening their ability to represent clients. He bullies universities by threatening to withdraw funds. And his tariffs bully other countries that are weak or vulnerable. It remains to be seen whether China has vulnerabilities that will cause it to succumb to Trump’s bullying.
Jack Justice
Santa Fe
Stay awake!
In all of the Gospels, there is reference to staying awake. You never know the time or the place that evil will try to prevail over the common good. Stay awake! Martin Luther King Jr., minister and theologian, in his famous speech, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” warned this country to be awake to evil, especially efforts against civil rights. The vernacular of being awake in the African-American community is woke. Its roots are in the words of Jesus Christ. Be awake to evil, especially what we are seeing today in the blatant lawlessness of government.
Sadly, a tiny white minority is making attempts to demean the commands of Jesus and his followers and the power of being woke. This lawless minority is attempting to tear our amazing country apart. They want to turn the government into an object that serves the few, not the common good. Our country has been built by immigrants and continues to be to this day. We are known for our freedoms, innovation and generosity; we are now turning into an isolated police state, a Vladimir Putin-esque autocracy.
On Easter, Christians remember the resurrection of Christ from the dead, from evil. We, too, can. Stay awake!
Tom Aageson
Santa Fe
