Dear Editor,
Donald Trump petulantly stalks out of pressers and haughtily betrays our allies and nemeses alike. In effect, he takes his marbles and goes home. Fine! We’ll just keep on playing.
But in fact, there is a silver lining.
And that is: the betrayed and disenfranchised are flexing their muscle with a new vigor.
A new generation of Americans of color is taking the helm — African-American women and men mayors, representatives in state legislatures and Congress, police chiefs, military officers.
A new generation of white Americans is joining them and adding the lessons of the past 50 years, learned from their grandparents’ era that the fight against racial hatred has not only been hard-won but is unacceptable and in fact irrelevant to our progress as a society.
Nations around the world stand aghast or amused at the depths to which we have sunk under Donald Trump’s watch. The cultural memory of strong-man dictators with their heel on their citizens’ necks is still too fresh, and to watch as the U.S. sink into that quicksand of lies and armed might directed against its citizenry must be the height of irony.
But there is, again, a silver lining. In the darkest hour of the fascist Tripartite Pact of 1940, as an unprepared Europe and then America braced themselves for the global assault on democracy, the U.S. swung into action with an unprecedented mobilization that engaged the efforts of every citizen — but at enormous sacrifice.
And we responded with indispensable aid to our allies: Lend-Lease to Great Britain and the Marshall Plan of 1948, which earmarked over $15 million to help Europe rebuild.
All this, indeed, made American truly great.
Now, as the free world waits for America to come to its senses, a new era of autonomy from American sway is perhaps being realized. And as Trump hides from his own countrymen behind his (albeit damaging) bluster, our civil leaders — particularly our undaunted women governors and mayors, black or white — must confront the Bully-in-Chief with spirit, tenacity and creativity.
The world continues to move in the right direction … absent (and indeed in spite of) Donald Trump.
Julia Purdy, Rutland
