Letters Feb. 16

Bad manners

Over these past several years, it seems that the term “political correctness” has been getting a bad rap.

A few days ago, a senior US Senator from Utah, publicly labeled nearly half of his Senate peers “idiots.” As perplexing as this may seem on the surface, I would argue that it is in actuality not all that surprising given the current tone and attitude being used by Donald J. Trump, arguably the most influential human being on the planet.

We are back-sliding. Progress is being lost. The President of the United States of America has historically been viewed as ‘the’ role model for all Americans. His behavior, actions, words and tone are scrutinized comprehensively not only by the media, but by parents and teachers, business people, religious leaders and society as a whole.

To be fair, President Trump may not have started the current trend away from civility and decorum, but he has certainly fueled it, and has, in my opinion, ignited a fire storm of lewd, crude, offensive and downright insensitive comments. The standard has been lowered.

Setting an example for good personal character, taking the moral high ground—and to borrow words from the irreproachable, late Ms. Maya Angelou, “Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud [of obscenity,] they will proceed alone,” are basic human ideals we should all cherish.

The rhetoric we have been subjected to these past several months seems to become more extreme by the week. I was disappointed to learn that celebrities who are not normally considered political mouthpieces slipped into the muck at the Women’s March last month. I am not calling for perfectionism—simply because we are all human and mistakes do get made from time to time. Nor, am I suggesting that we should return to a bygone era. I am suggesting that we put some thought into our priorities.

We are descending into a pit of plain and simple bad manners. What happened to being thoughtful and respectful?

I call for some serious self-reflection by our President. Be his past experience in politics, or in business, basic decency should be the order of the day. Women, minorities, immigrants, the disabled and all Americans deserve no less.

Shelley Calissendorff, Pullman.

Political circus

I have become very concerned as I watch the political circus playing out in our country today. We are presented with an administration that pretends “alternative facts” are something akin to truth. The problem is that as humans we make decisions based on facts, and when the facts are wrong our decisions can only be expected to be wrong as well. Some facts and decisions are trivial; like audience size. I have spoken in front of many audiences and understand that it is easy to overestimate the size of those I stand in front of. It becomes slightly more serious when ego demands that an audience be the largest ever, despite readily available facts.

“Alternative truths” become more important when they relate to serious matters that could be followed by serious decisions.

One example is making up a fact of “millions of fraudulent votes” costing our president the popular vote.

This may be based on a true fact of millions of mistaken voter registrations, many by multiple state registrations or registered voters who are in fact dead.

That is not the same as voter fraud.

This LIE could be used to decide to place troops around polling places or even canceling an election.

“Surely that could never happen here,” you might say; but if a president gets used to making, and getting away with, arbitrary and dictatorial decisions based on “alternative truths” then historical facts have shown it does happen.

We rely on our representatives to act as a check to the executive branch. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is in a leadership position in congress and as such needs to act as a leader. A courageous leader defends truth and speaks out as a voice of reason. An ambitious politician goes along with those in power in the hopes of gaining more power. Waiting until presidential decisions become so egregious as to offend everyone will be too late if we become accustomed to just letting questionable actions go in defense of party unity.

I would ask Ms. McMorris Rodgers to be that courageous leader and not an ambitious politician. I hope we as citizens will exercise our privilege of influencing our representatives, while we still have that privilege.

Roy Moxley,

Colfax