MAGA dead-enders cling to Trump delusions and more letters to the editors

MAGA dead-enders cling to delusions

The boundary between sanity and insanity is the psychiatric concept of "reality testing." Trump crossed over that boundary into insanity long ago. The very first day of his presidency, he was selling his delusion that his inauguration was the biggest in American history. He found a willing audience for his falsehoods in America's right-wing rubes.

From the beginning, Kellyanne Conway was peddling what she called "alternative facts," and Giuliani was assuring us that "truth was not truth." Of late, some of Trump's biggest enablers have been jumping off the Trump crazy train. Even a Republican lapdog like Pat Robertson said Trump is living in an "alternate reality." Loyalists like John Bolton, Chris Christie and Bill Barr found the paranoid fantasy of election fraud an insane bridge too far.

MAGA dead-enders, however, continue to follow this clown as he plots America's first coup. Meeting with Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon, he has been working on a plan to declare martial law in four states to overturn elections that he lost, while totally ignoring a pandemic that is killing 3,000 Americans a day. About 71 million Americans drank the Trump Kool-Aid.

Terry Stulce

Ooltewah

Elected reps expected to enforce Constitution

To Max Boot's point about Trump's discussion with Michael Flynn about declaring martial law and having the military "rerun" the election: No, I do not doubt that Trump would do this if he could find any active-duty generals willing to comply.

What really worries me is that Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Rep. Scott Desjarlais and Rep. Chuck Fleischmann would back him. Our Constitution will not run itself. We need people who will enforce it.

Nancy Bishop

Birchwood, Tennessee

Public health risk rises with deniers

Dodge City, Kansas, evokes memories of the 19th-century "Wild West" and Wyatt Earp or the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" in Tombstone, Arizona, between Earp, his brothers, Doc Holliday and Ike Clanton and the Cowboys.

The 21st century has thrown the spotlight again on Dodge City, this time over the resignation of Mayor Joyce Warshaw due to threatening emails and phone calls because of her support of a mask mandate.

To shed light on the debate, the CDC reported in November that the Kansas governor issued a statewide mask mandate "in public spaces" with counties being able to opt out. The 81 counties that chose not to wear masks had a 100% increase in COVID-19 cases, and during the same period from early July to late August, the 21 counties that adhered to masking guidelines had a 6% decrease in cases.

The CDC noted similar findings in 15 other states and should remind us that facts matter and "alternative facts" may promote sickness or death or egregious behavior by some mask deniers.

Dr. John G."Jay" Paty

Fight this assault on our civility

I am horrified that 74 million Americans voted to end any thought of democracy in our country. It was fragile at best. The next time we experience an assault on our great experiment, we may have a more qualified, smoother insurgent than Trump.

The Republicans have been trying to destroy the framework of our Constitution since Nixon, then Reagan, now Trump. The blasé attitude taken by the Senate, led by Moscow Mitch, toward our citizens fighting for their lives and to put food on the table and a roof over their families' heads is unforgivable. The abject arrogance and ignorance of Trumpism is destroying everything we hold dear. We must all band together as one and fight this assault on civility and our Constitution.

Dolores Benton

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