my friend Mark Beaudin sent me this email, and is graciously allowing me to share it:
From: Mark Beaudin
"This is a letter that I submitted to our Anchorage newspaper but was not published. I believe that we need strong leadership before the inauguration. We must show people how and why Trump took actions to create problems that he could blame on others. We can show how disinformation and emotion were used to manipulate them into voting for Trump, even though many had reservations about him. We can show the attempts to limit voting. We can have testimonials of people who voted for Trump and now realize that they were conned, so that there is a growing number of people coming to this realization. We can point out the direction that Trumps early decisions and plans will take us in terms of hurting our economy. We need to turn the herd mentality so that we can stop this betrayal of America. Biden failed to stop Trump and hold him accountable. He must do it quickly or resign and let Kamala take over now. She was a prosecutor and would be better at doing this. Perhaps she can stop Trump using the powers she would have as President. She needs to remove the Justices who gave her those powers and call for new elections, making it clear that she would not be running again. In any event it will not be pretty.
My letter follows:
You may have heard the saying "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and waving a cross". I fear that is what we are experiencing today in this country. There have always been political battles but, until Donald Trump came on the scene, the expressions of hatred and threat of violence were minimal. That is no longer the case.
We did not get to where we are now by accident. You may have heard of firemen starting fires so that they can play hero putting them out. According to a Reuters, "The Trump administration cut staff by more than two-thirds at a key U.S. public health agency operating inside China, as part of a larger rollback of U.S.-funded health and science experts on the ground there leading up to the coronavirus outbreak". Also, "the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned.
The American disease expert, a medical epidemiologist embedded in China's disease control agency, left her post in July, according to four sources with knowledge of the issue. The first cases of the new coronavirus may have emerged as early as November, and as cases exploded, the Trump administration in February chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and keeping U.S. experts from entering the country to help."
“It was heartbreaking to watch,” said Bao-Ping Zhu, a Chinese American who served in that role, which was funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2007 and 2011. “If someone had been there, public health officials and governments across the world could have moved much faster.”
But Trump eliminated the position and the virus spread. In the end, the U.S. had a far higher Covid Death Rate than other industrialized countries.
As for Trumps concern about migrants at our southern border, here is some background on that:
(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Monday cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, after Trump blasted the three countries because thousands of their citizens had sought asylum at the U.S. border with Mexico.
The plan will likely encounter stiff opposition in Congress.
Lawmakers, including some of Trump's fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, have chafed against the president's repeated decisions to disregard spending bills passed by Congress, some of which he has signed into law himself.
Lawmakers who opposed the plan said it was cruel to cut off aid to countries grappling with hunger and crime and that the move would be counterproductive because it would more likely increase the number of migrants than decrease it.
"As feared, a presidential tantrum will limit our nation's ability to actually help address the challenges forcing people to flee to the U.S.," Democratic Senator Bob Menendez said on Twitter.
After a lot of work in Congress, a bi-partisan border bill was agreed to that would have strengthened out border law enforcement. That bill was then killed because Trump worked to kill it. He did not want the situation to get better, since he wanted to run on Biden's inability to protect our borders. He is done just that, scaring people with dire warnings about a situation that he helped to create.
Alaskans who support Trump probably don't like that he was unfaithful to all of his wives, or that he has a history of not paying his debts. They may have concerns about his age, health and mental acuity. They may not agree with his contempt for people with handicaps, or the childish name-calling that is his stock in trade. They must realize that, under Trump, Pebble Mine would finally get the green light to go forward and the days of the Bristol Bay fishery would be limited. They may even be aware of what Project 2025 entails, dismantling Social Security and Medicare, but they still support him.
Trump's most ardent supporters seem to be evangelical Christians. This puzzles me greatly. If God is a loving god, why would they follow a man who constantly seeks to spread hate and fear? Why are corporate profits more important than people and other living things?
Trump worships money and power. The richest people and corporations have gotten far richer since Trump cut their rate, adding to the national debt and depending on tariffs to bring in more tax revenue from the rest of us. Trump claims that China is paying the tariffs but that is another lie. Tariffs are taxes that our government puts on goods purchased from other countries. The company buying goods from China pays those taxes (tariffs) to our government and charges us more to recover that additional expense. This adds to our rate of inflation. Trump is not so stupid that he does not know this, but he obviously does not think much of his supporters intelligence or he would not keep telling the same lie, when it so easy to check.
Until now, this has been a country governed by laws. All men were considered equal under the law. The Supreme Court Justices that Trump and the Republicans put in place have changed that. If even one man is above the law, then the rule of law has ended. Right now, while the wealthiest people can do pretty much what they want to do, they still have limits. A corrupt court system takes away those limits. Since the Supreme Court has ceased to be the protecter of our Constitution, even a close election result will be a win for Trump. We need to have an election result that is so large that it is not in doubt and cannot be overturned by the court. And we need to be ready to protest if they try take our country away from us. I believe there are a lot more good people than evil people in this country. Now is the time to make that obvious to the whole world. America can still be a beacon of freedom that other countries respect."
