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May 8, 2024 Editor, The News-Gazette: I used to think the opposite of love was hate. But what I think I’ve learned in the past eight years of the Trump era is that the opposite of love is fear. Fear causes people to behave in a way that under normal circumstances they would never consider. It is impossible to love someone/something that creates fear in the heart.
Change is a huge component of fear. When we can’t stop change that we feel threatens our life as we know it, we look for a “savior” who claims to have all the answers to our fears.
Trump has been that “savior model” to his supporters for the last eight years. The only problem is that he has also been the creator of many of those fears. He is the great “Fear Monger.” He portrays immigrants as rapists and drug dealers rather than families fleeing drug cartels and violence in their own countries. He accuses them of “poisoning” our society. Yet his own mother was an immigrant as well as two of his three wives. He is going to “save” you by building a wall etc., etc.
But Trump has always made big promises and never delivered. When you listen to him talk at his rallies, you recognize that almost everything out of his mouth is a lie. Not too surprising for a man who told 30,573 lies during his administration.
But the Trump era is coming to a close. He is currently in the first of four criminal trials he must face. As a result, his mental and physical health is declining. He is more likely to face time in prison than in the White House.
We deserve far better than a woman abuser, racist and fascist as the leader of our country and the free world. A new age and future lies ahead. I hope we can once again come together as a country and work on some of the more pressing matters which threaten us such as climate change. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
BETH HOUSER Lexington
