From: Doug Otto
Columbus
Looking back on my life, I can identify multiple eras. An era is of undetermined length and is the predominate memory of that portion of time. Events certainly happen within an era that don’t fit with my characterization, but the tone of the era doesn’t change.
These are the eras I have lived through as I see them:
• The 15-year era after WWII of prosperity and “I like Ike."
• The era of rebellion leading to massive social change.
• The era of "me." Those hippies who had rebelled against “the man” put on suits and went to work on Wall Street.
• The era of relative peace. No shots were being fired by or at American forces, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War ended.
• The era of technology. Everyday people owned computers and the internet emerged.
• The era of fear. Our lives were changed forever by the 9/11 attacks.
• The era of social media. As it turns out, there are some good things and some very bad flaws with this one.
You may see different eras, but I believe in the concept as described.
That brings us to the past five years: the era of hate.
Who drove the following practices to become acceptable?
• Calling for our political opponents to be imprisoned.
• Calling everyone who disagrees with us an idiot.
• Claiming that some Nazi-type thugs are "very good people."
• Laughing when a presidential candidate promotes grabbing women by their private parts.
• An elected official surrounding himself with appointees and advisers who have accumulated 10 felony convictions.
• Making friendships with the lowest life dictators on earth and turning his back on allies who have been friends for decades.
The answer to all the questions is the day Donald Trump came down the escalator to announce his candidacy for president.
There is a segment of our population (I think about 30 million people) who have been closet haters all their lives. They endured laws of equality because of peer pressure, but they bit their tongues every time they had to encounter a Black person or someone with a foreign accent.
Now, no one less than the president has, by example, given them permission to come out of their closets of hate. And come out they have. They cheer their man’s every word without evaluating what the words mean. We’ve gone from friendly or even heated disagreements to immediate hate.
If we let this continue, our children under age 10 will grow up believing that hate is the norm because they can’t remember another era. Even if you disregard everything about Democratic policies, you surely can’t think a few more dollars in your 401(k), or some more points in the stock market, are an even trade for the doom of having another four years of Trump. Democrat or Republican, we need to compromise on some of our political beliefs because nothing is more urgent than getting rid of this man as our president.
Editor’s note: This letter is paid political content. It is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
