Letters

Reader Ed Surgan, in his Letter to the Editor two weeks ago [“Love Struck,” Letters, January 30], describes his near ecstasy at seeing the recent inauguration of Donald Trump, and says of himself, “You wouldn’t be wrong to chuckle a bit and think this guy has lost it.”

Oh, how right he was.

He accuses Democrats of “sowing division and acrimony.” Tell me, Mr. Surgan, was it Democrats who called their opponents “low IQ”? Was it Democrats who accused legal immigrants in Ohio of eating people’s pets? This lie led to death threats and bomb scares at local schools and hospitals, causing children to miss school and medical procedures to be postponed. (Remarkably, felines and canines were taken off the menu as soon as Mr. Trump was reelected.)

When Mr. Surgan accuses Dems of “sowing division and acrimony,” I have to question what he has been looking at for the past eight years. From his ride down the escalator to today, Trump has constantly tried to make us hate each other.

According to him, immigrants are criminals and misfits sent here by their home countries to destroy America. They are living on welfare while simultaneously stealing our jobs. Gay folks are said to be destroying our moral fabric, and trans people are demonized daily. These people are all worthy of our disdain for one simple reason: They are not like us.

The truth is that crime rates are lower in immigrant areas than in other locations. The vast majority of immigrants are hard-working people who just want to make a better life for their families. Few people support open borders, but fixing our immigration crisis does not require that whole groups of people should be demonized.

And why should we hate gays and trans folks? If two people down the street want to marry a person of the same sex, how does that affect me? And why should I care if someone in my community wants to identify as a male or a female, or a giraffe? I will give you that trans women should not be able to compete in girls sports. But that doesn’t mean that we should make their lives as miserable as possible. Nor does it mean that we have to hate them.

Mr. Surgan was excited to see the Supreme Court members in attendance at the inauguration. Apparently, he missed who was in the front row: tech oligarchs who each donated millions to Trump. Including Elon Musk, whose quarter of a billion dollar donation has allowed him to illegally fire government workers and to access confidential U.S. Treasury files that include Social Security numbers and bank information of millions of Americans. Including yours.

John Neely

Westhampton Beach