Letter to the Editor: About those accusations
Making an accusation in absolute terms leaves it easy to disprove, and impossible to substantiate. From the first six lines of the response to criticism I can infer that the number 74,222,958 represents Trump voters, 2020 election. I also get the gist that the writer feels that if those people had read the US Constitution then they would not have voted for him. Just from a theoretical perspective, to prove the assertion, the writer would need to contact nearly 75 million people, verify that they were Trump supporters, and quiz them regarding the question: have you ever read the constitution? On the other hand, to disprove the allegation, requires just finding one Trump supporter who actually read the constitution. Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are classified as constitutional attorneys, so we can be certain that they have read the constitution, and we know that they supported Trump. Accusation disproven.
Those Senators may place more emphasis on certain sections of the constitution than you or I would, but nonetheless, they read the document. The pettiness that is evident in my argument stems directly from those “absolute terms” so often found in LTEs.
Another petty argument that I will make is that I never suggested that Supreme Court Justices couldn’t be impeached. I mentioned the lifetime appointments and went on to suggest that delegating the responsibility of presiding over an impeachment to Senator Leahy, was far from sufficient grounds to merit the impeachment of Chief Justice Roberts. I could be even pettier and point out that it would be the impeachment of a former president. Don’t write anything critical of Justice Roberts; he could become an even more critical swing vote.
Another instance of the use of absolute terms, contained in a previous letter reads as follows: “What have Republicans ever done for the 99%? The answer-NOTHING.” If you had said, “in the current millennium,” I might be more inclined to agree. However, you said, “ever.” If your own life experiences or education somehow glossed over a few events, I’ll try to fill some gaps. The Republican Eisenhower Administration relentlessly pushed the interstate highway system. They pushed legislation providing funding, they found designers and surveyors, and in the process of linking East to West they created millions of jobs. Expansion and maintenance of that highway system has continued through Democratic and Republican administrations at the Federal and State levels. I should also point out that Highways 70 and 395 are tied to that highway system.
Going further back in history, the first Republican elected to serve as President was Abraham Lincoln; he was the president that initiated the trans-continental railroad (creating many jobs), established Yosemite National Park, and signed The Emancipation Proclamation.
Gene Nielsen
Crescent Mills