Readers write

Freedom to vote under attack by MAGA

I’m trying hard and doing the best I can to keep the efforts and sacrifices made by generations before me in mind when I take in the daily news.

History isn’t helping — at least not knowing the destructive (albeit temporary in the long view) events that have torn peaceful, law-abiding, citizen-focused societies into power-driven, exclusionary, racist autocracies.

Now, we test yet another devolution of a democratic ideal that made the United States a model for aspiring democracies around the world. We are pushing back against forces that challenge the freedom to vote and to ensure that our vote is counted.

I can’t imagine the rationalization that tricks the MAGA mind into thinking this is good progress. Unless, as in other collapsed democracies in history, that is simply part of the process.

KEN MEAD, MARIETTA

Hold Trump enablers accountable at the ballot box

Donald J. Trump will be remembered as one of the most influential presidents in our country’s history. That is not a compliment. He has been the catalyst of the physical and philosophical destruction of much of what, ironically, makes America great.

His petulant, narcissistic need for attention has already resulted in the disfigurement of the White House, the reflecting pool (immortalized by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.), the Kennedy Center and other national treasures. He has plans for more vulgarity, like the gigantic memorial arch in Washington

Those physical alterations perhaps can be restored, but the damage he has caused to the spirit of this country, to our standing and projection of power in the world, will be harder to fix. Eliminating global aid programs like USAID, pulling out of treaties, gutting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stripping our civil rights, trampling norms and laws, starting wars — those actions and more have irreparably damaged the perception, and reality, of America as a global leader.

Trump will be gone in a couple of years, but the problem — the enablers — will remain. Republican senators, representatives, governors, judges, attorneys general and on down the line made it all possible. They supported his policies, violated laws, looked the other way or just stayed silent in the face of anti-democratic actions. In pursuit of power, they enabled a madman and disqualified themselves from leadership. They must be held accountable at the ballot box.

The coming midterm elections will be our first chance to take a step in a new direction, and I sincerely hope we take it.