Be honest
Marvin Dugger, Rick Rogers and Jeff Sayre, I challenge you to be honest in our discourse. I’ll start.
I’m not a liberal. I’m a lifelong conservative. I started campaigning for Republican candidates at age 15. At age 16, I joined the National Rifle Association as a junior shooter. I quit both the NRA and the Republican Party when they became infested with Vladimir Putin’s agents intent on destroying America.
I hate what President Donald Trump has done to my party and our country. That he is a moron has been stated by his own cabinet, staff and party leaders. His lack of compassion and forgiveness are the antithesis of Judeo-Christian beliefs. His lust for gold and sex is legendary. He is the worst president in American history.
Now it’s your turn to be honest, guys. Either recognize you’ve been led astray by Putin’s White House disinformation or throw open your very powerful journalistic windows and shout to the world: “We love the godless moron because he says what we think.”
Paul Oman
Clarkston
Capital’s leadership void
The week following Memorial Day was one of the worst in memory. The 100,000 deaths due to COVID-19 was bad enough, but seeing the fatal knee on George Floyd’s neck and the violent national reaction to the video intensified the misery.
I believe the instantaneous spread of information has added to pain, but it has also made it clear in places such as rural Idaho that despite what we may wish the world to be, it isn’t. It is so easy to forget suffering beyond our communities that we are tempted to believe we are the world in small, and want no reminders to the contrary.
The knee on Floyd’s neck was a reminder, however, and so was the 100,000 death mark.
It reminded me of the leadership vacuum in our nation’s capital. I wished for touching oratory from our president appealing to our best emotions. I may as well have been wishing for Abraham Lincoln to rise from the grave. We are stuck with a tweeter-in-chief with no clue how to engender hope or show empathy.
Even from my peaceful home in Idaho, I understand the frustrations of those who feel they’ve had enough of it. I only wish the rioters understood that voting that man out of office would accomplish much more than destroying a store.
As the poet Langston Hughes suggested, a dream deferred might just “explode.” It is an explosion magnified not only by technology but by our president. Even in Idaho we hear it.
Mike Ruskovich
Grangeville
Give non-religious a voice
Where are the non-Christian and non-religious writers for communities of faith in the Lewiston Tribune’s readership? Why is it that week after week people who do not practice Christianity or religion at all but who do support print media read column inches devoted to one faith or religious-based thinking without regard to those with different belief systems?
Can the Tribune recognize there are people of faith who are non-religious, that there are people who have no religious beliefs and hold them strongly as any other with Christian beliefs?
Where are the writings of support and community for those who need it but without the messages from the Bible?
Non-religious (dare I say atheist or even agnostics) folks need messages of support in mainstream media just like all the religious folks, too. Where are those writers?
Andrew R. Tucker
Lewiston
Cash no good?
Things have changed at the Asotin County landfill since I wrote my letter to the editor several weeks ago, which was May 31.
The landfill is now open to the public which, in my opinion, should never have been closed, but a new series of problem exists. Now the landfill only takes Visa or MasterCard or debit cards for payment. They will not accept checks or cash. This excludes people who do not have a credit card for some reason or perhaps use Discover or American Express. I can understand an organization not accepting certain cards or personal checks but I have never heard of anyone in business refusing to take cash.
As a result, long lines form (often for as long as the eye can see) for both entrance and payment. The clerk now passes a stick through the sliding window on which one slides his card. In my instance, it would not accept my Visa card until it was swiped about four times. This causes long delays. I cannot see how accepting cash has anything to do with the spread of COVID-19. If there is a concern for the safety of the attendant, he could just wear gloves.
Clark Koenen
Clarkston
