Letters to the Editor Tuesday, Feb. 7 – Two, from readers in Halfmoon and Schoharie

Many on the far right put symbolism before substance.

It is more important to profess your dedication to Christianity, to go to Church, and pray publicly than it is to live up to the morality of selflessness that Jesus taught.

It is more important to stand, hand on heart and pledge allegiance to the flag, to “act” like a patriot than to live up to American democratic values.

And as Francis Wilkinson points out in his brilliant column, “Trump’s border wall settles into a strange costly afterlife,” it is more important to build a symbolic wall that immigrants can easily overcome than to actually do something to control immigration effectively. As Wilkinson humorously states, the wall “…can be easily surmounted by a ladder, a technology that is many thousands of years old and widely available in Mexico.”

When Democrats proposed “money for migrant processing centers at the border and badly needed immigration courts, one result of which would almost certainly be speedier expulsion of migrants from the US, the idea was promptly killed.”

Republicans don’t like wasting money, or at least so they say:

Texas Governor “Abbott’s wall, which the Texas Observer called a ‘colossal waste of money,’ has generated contracts for GOP campaign donors and a talking point for Abbott’s political future.” The estimate for completing the wall in Texas is estimated at $17b. by the Texas Observer.

“The state’s (Arizona) taxpayers will spend about $76 million or so to remove the eyesores (a wall of shipping containers), which is a bargain compared to the roughly $95 million that they spent to install them in the first place.”

Wilkinson concludes, “It’s a silent scream of fear and loathing directed at the people on the other side. In which case maybe the wall is not a costly, colossal failure. It’s therapy.”

You are correct Guy, facts and reasoning are irrelevant to the MAGA crowd. So my response to their continuing ignorant comments regarding the balloon is this post from yesterday:

REALLY BM, LGB, FLYNN, WILL YOU CONTINUE TO BELIEVE THE TRUMPS OVER U.S. MILITARY AND DEFENSE OFFICIALS?

If you do, you have your heads buried so far up their butts that you are suffering impaired thinking from oxygen deprivation. These people are obvious scam artists: Trump University, Trump digital assets, and his phony charity; and pathological liars, the election was rigged, I’m the least racist person you’ll ever meet, I have a cheaper and better health care plan, I’ll eliminate the national debt blah, blah, blah; as well as the poorest of losers and phonier than a Trump superhero figure.

NO ONE IN HIS RIGHT MIND WOULD HAVE TRUSTED TRUMP WITH SENSITIVE INTELLIGENCE, NOT THAT HE WAS INTERESTED ANYWAY. THIS WAS A MAN WHO WROTE LOVE LETTERS TO A BRUTAL N. KOREAN DICTATOR, KIM JUNG UN, AND RESPECTED AND ADMIRED VLADIMIR PUTIN.

Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law:

“Sensationalist claims have circulated this election season about the extent of voter fraud, with some
politicians going so far as to tell voters to fear that this November’s election will be “rigged.” Because
electoral integrity is one of the elements necessary to making America the greatest democracy in the
world, claims like this garner media attention, and frighten and concern voters. But putting rhetoric
aside to look at the facts makes clear that fraud by voters at the polls is vanishingly rare, and does not
happen on a scale even close to that necessary to “rig” an election.
Studies Agree: Impersonation Fraud by Voters Very Rarely Happens
 The Brennan Center’s seminal report on this issue, The Truth About Voter Fraud, found that most
reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or
bad data matching practices. The report reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for
voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Given this tiny
incident rate for voter impersonation fraud, it is more likely, the report noted, that an American
“will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”

Though a few die hards like Kari Lake, the sore-loser in the Arizona race for governor, have attempted to change their losing campaigns with hysterical cries of widespread voter fraud, the American public sees these attempts for what they are and are tired of false accusations about voter fraud from MAGA losers who just follow the example of their erstwhile loser-in chief. Our democracy is more important than their frustration, anger, and thin-skinned bitterness.

Steve, when you post a factual well-argued conservative point of view all “liberals” would be happy to discuss and debate but answering unfounded opinions born of emotions is a waste of time.