Letter: It’s not OK to lie
Published: 10-22-2024 9:14 AM |
My brother recently asked me, “When did it become OK just to lie?” It became OK when Donald Trump became president and among the first words out of his mouth was a lie about the size of the crowd at his inauguration.
Now he lies about everything: hurricane relief, Democrats controlling the weather, doctors killing newborn babies, children undergoing gender-reassignment surgery during school hours, immigrants eating pets. And he’s still lying about winning the 2020 election, about voter fraud and a rigged justice system that, it seems, exists solely to attack him.
Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, want to confuse us by twisting the truth and “flooding the zone” with disinformation. And they’re succeeding. They’re dividing us, demonizing their opponents, and mocking the most vulnerable among us: people with disabilities, immigrants, veterans with unspeakable battle injuries. When did that also become OK?
I believe in the promise of America, articulated by FDR back in 1941, when he put forth the “four freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. I truly believe in the motto “Live free or die,” and so did my father, who was a prisoner of war during World War II, and my uncle, who was killed in Normandy in the summer of 1944.
They fought to defeat Nazism. Perhaps your father or grandfathers did, too. I believe that a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for the end of freedom and the beginning of tyranny. It is, in short, a vote for the end of America as we know it. And if you give your vote to Trump, there won’t be any way for you ever to take it back.
Barbara Jatkola
Jaffrey
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