Trump’s unfettered speech
I very much would like Donald Trump to know how distressing I find the prospect of his becoming president and how alarming it is to discover he actually attracts a crowd with his narcissistic drivel. How can it be that a man who has driven four businesses into bankruptcy and brags about it, claiming simply to play the system better than most, is being seriously considered by anyone as the person most suited to take the helm of our ongoing economic recovery?
How can it be that anyone is even listening to a man who not only went the extra mile to avoid serving his country in Vietnam but belittles those of us who did serve and were captured by the enemy? He qualifies his pathetic characterization of U.S. Sen. John McCain as a loser because he was captured by saying rest of us who were not captured are the winners.
Perhaps Trump would be interested to know how few of us who were not captured feel he is a winner for not being captured by avoiding service altogether. If I’d had my wits about me, I would have avoided Vietnam, too. I also disagree with McCain’s politics on nearly every level. The notion, however, that I would feel I had the right to characterize McCain’s service and long detention as a prisoner of war as anything other than a noble sacrifice is so foreign and so abhorrent.
I suggest, just this once, we reconsider the unfettered right to freedom of speech as it applies to Trump.
Phil Crossman
Vinalhaven
Solve global insecurity
What many people don’t know is we can improve our national and global security through the reduction of global poverty. For those of us who have traveled to the developing world, we know how well we have it here. Among the drama, the seemingly unprofessional tactics, potentially tumultuous civil rights violations and blunders, there are other problems that can be fixed with less effort.
Through strategically minded firms and nonprofits, we’re improving how we distribute our foreign aid. A living wage may be a problem in the U.S., which potentially can be fixed, but there are millions of people dying because of inadequate drinking water and food. One in five American jobs are export related, and 45 percent of our exports go to developing nations.
We can encourage consumer growth in developing markets when we give capable and willing people a means to an end. U.S. agricultural goods and tools, if made available, can assist these developing countries.
The recent deaths of five U.S. servicemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a travesty. The world is unsafe. The world is uneducated. The world is not peaceful when people are forced to go without their basic necessities. Don’t let the myths and pessimism of foreign aid deter offering support and funding to people of the developing world who are worse off than any travesty we may endure here in Maine. As terrorism inches closer to our doorsteps, to our duty stations, we must understand there are ways of combating this extremism and many others.
Alexander Wild
Waterville
Send our students overseas
I find it so irritating when we keep referring to our full-time high school foreign students as “international.” There is little “international” about them. They almost exclusively are Asian and primarily Chinese.
They understand that in today’s world, people need to be truly educated. Today’s students need to know math and science, art and languages and much more. And they need be fluent in the language of commerce, which is English, and the Asians know that.
Music, art and language existed long before computers, women’s studies or civics. Of course, we need those, too, but to think an educated public doesn’t need to know a world language is idiotic. We already have succeeded in removing oratory and public speaking from all but the best schools, which leaves us with leaders who can barely put a sentence together or speak with any grace.
We continue to be so short sighted that we think attracting money by encouraging students to come here from overseas is the smart thing, when the smart thing would be for us to be sending as many of our students to learn Chinese, Arabic and Russian as they send here.
Aynne Ames
Belfast