Letters to the Editor by Bill Alewyn

     Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. “Cancun” Cruz, both elected representatives of Texas, were horrified (as always) last week by the latest massacre of school children — as damn well they should be. As elected representatives who oppose the ban of assault weapons, these “horrified” politicians were cynical accomplices to the slaughter of those 19 children. As is any Texan complicit enough to vote for these two morally bankrupt individuals.

     As are we, fellow Arizonans, come next election, should we vote for any bald-faced “horrified” hypocrite who opposes universal background checks and supports the private ownership of assault-grade weapons. I’m calling you out, Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, Debbie Lesko, Wendy Rogers, you gutless gatekeepers of American morality who would rather ban history books they deem inappropriate for children.  

     Get human, people! AR-15s — not books — are inappropriate for children!   

     So, we know by name these previously elected representatives, these “horrified” politicians who aren’t going to do a damn thing to stop the next Uvalde or Sandy Hook massacre. But we can. It is our obligation as voters to hold all elected representatives — Democrat, Republican, independent — both responsible and accountable for their continued lack of actions.  

     These days it is not enough to be horrified. No more thoughts and prayers, folks. It is our inviolable duty to vote on issues that matter, such as the lives of your children. Furthermore, we need to know on every level of elected government where our candidates stand on gun control. We need to vote these NRA stooges and stone-cold accomplices to murder out of office. We need to do this, Arizona. We need to do it for ourselves, for our communities and for our children.  

     If we don’t, then the next Sandy Hook or Robb Elementary School is on us.  

     An open letter to a disgraced apprentice president: Go away. Please.

     Florence, Arizona, is a hardworking, law-respecting community. You have no business coming here, you are not welcome here, and you do not belong here — except perhaps behind the walls of Florence state prison with your ID number stitched to an orange jumpsuit. Your inflated delusions of self-importance have wreaked harm and havoc upon our country. Enough is enough. We’ve heard your self-serving lies 30,000 times before. Shame on you for the crimes you repeatedly and with malice aforethought wrought upon a nation that — for all your transparent blather — should have known better.

     Fortunately, most Americans aren’t as gullible as you might think. Even in these divisive times savvy folks know better than to attend one of your self-aggrandizing, ego-inflating, alms-soliciting temper tantrums disguised as a MAGA clan gathering. Those who don’t, I emphatically urge not to patronize your next Save America rally.

Save America? Really? Please.

     It’s been a year since your brainwashed cult of misled myrmidons stormed our nation’s Capitol in their felonious attempt — among other treasonous crimes — to overthrow a democratic election. Now, go home, disgraced ex-president, do what you do best: cheat at golf, gargle twice a day with hydroxychloroquine, take your shopworn El Duce impersonation to Impressions Camp — but, for the sake of this country, go home and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

     A subversive reader since the age of 12, I celebrated Banned Books Week by rereading John Steinbeck’s "The Grapes of Wrath." Hard to believe this classic social realism novel was once banned in our schools. Then again, there are those in Washington — threatened old white guys mostly — who would ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory from our universities today. Now hold on a minute, Mitch. Everyone knows the moment you prohibit something — sex, alcohol, a song on the radio, plaid underwear on Tuesdays — you increase the cultural and commercial value of that new illicit something. Look at Prohibition. Look at the number of copies "The Grapes of Wrath" sold after it was banned.

     If these old white guys back in Washington are successful in banning Critical Race Theory from school curriculums, they will only succeed in creating the next new something everyone wants to wrap their minds around. It won’t be long before subversive cartels begin installing illegal CRT speakeasies in white suburban neighborhoods complete with online bootleg classrooms and overpriced textbooks arriving in the dead of night in unmarked brown paper packages shipped via Amazon Prime and an unsuspecting USPS.

I hyperbolize. Maybe. But not to the absurd extent of Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell and that new batch of Ban the Books clowns. These are the would-be censors who inform us our educators must not teach theories that might give students “bad dreams” or “feelings of cultural guilt.”

     You know what gives me bad dreams and feelings of cultural guilt?

     A bunch of old white guys telling me it’s for my own protection.

     Still, I suppose I should be grateful I live in a country where the fearful teachings of old white guys is protected by our Constitution. Imagine, if you will, living in a country where a book by Ted Cruz could get banned for our protection.

     To all those disenfranchised trumplings/domestic terrorists — some dressed as runners-up in what looked to me like a Village People masquerade contest — who attached their Confederate flags and odious 2020 Trump banners to that massive interstate clown car train wreck at our Capitol on Wednesday, I am so glad to hear your empathetic führer “loves you” and “feels your pain.”

     I feel your pain, too.

     Now, Faux Viking Man and your merry mob rule crew, it’s time to take off your berserker horns, climb into your big boy jammies and walk out your collective pain. Then, in time, you too can legitimately vote the bum out of office, which — if you were paying any attention back in November — is exactly what the rest of us legally did. It’s called participatory democracy, Bubba, and — though painful at times for some — this participatory democracy of ours clobbers us all in the end.

     Who among us, Republican or Democrat, hasn’t at times felt the pain of majority rule? Or, as the case may be, an insufferable oligarchy ineptly posing as majority rule. Because — and let’s be honest with ourselves now —who among us hasn’t suffered from the cumulative effects of Post Trumpatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) over these last four years?

     So now, let’s all be good American neighbors and citizens again. Which means I will remove my old 1968 Pat Paulsen for President poster from my window if you, good neighbor, agree to remove your retro 2020 Trump election banner from your flagpole.

     So, good neighbor, please take down your banner, in the name of everyone’s pain.

     Since Jefferson first penned the words “created equal,” we have struggled with the concept of equality — racial, social, economic and constitutional equality — in this country. It seems to me even in the best of times our country takes only incremental steps down that long and difficult path. And, sometimes, that aspiring road toward human equality feels more like the road not taken. This week, thanks to Donald Trump, America took two giant goose steps down that road rarely taken — but in the wrong direction, as we’ve come to expect. We all saw it on CNN and MSNBC and Fox.     

     This time, had Trump’s delusional posturing not been so consequential, he would remain as usual an object of national scorn and ridicule — a gross caricature of some self-absorbed 18th century monarch, a Mel Brooks parody of Louis XVI, perhaps. “I love my people. Pull!”     

     Instead of human catapults, this week we saw peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park and national police using helicopters, tear gas and rubber bullets — plus Trump’s own bizarre threat of “ominous weapons” and “vicious dogs” — put a disgraceful end to that peaceful (and constitutionally protected) demonstration. Oh my, oh my, oh my, what transgressions did these demonstrators commit to bring such royal wrath down upon their heads? Lest we forget, those folks were protesting yet another police murder of an unarmed black man. They were protesting the institutional racism we have long ignored in this country. They were protesting the racial, social and economic inequalities that tear this country apart.     

     Frankly, who blames them? And, frankly, what a missed opportunity, a Churchill moment, to take an incremental step down that long and difficult path toward national unity.     

     Yet — as any deposed monarch will tell you — when the opposition grows exponentially, the king soon runs out of royal hounds.
 

     It’s hard for anyone to have empathy for a man who has no empathy for anyone except himself. A man who castigates journalists who ask legitimate “nasty” questions and are “unappreciative” of the fine work he does. A man who brags about his COVID-19 press conference ratings and what a truly “great” and “amazing” and “fantastic” and “tremendous” and “incredible” job he is doing even though he inherited a thankless job from a previous “failed” and “broken” administration. Really, Donald?    

     About the only thing this self-aggrandizing perfect storm of a president hasn’t taken credit for is the new COVID-19 emergency face mask made from day-old pancakes and his own “incredible” lack of ownership to this crisis.    

     What a perfect time to self-quarantine from Donald Trump and stream old movies instead. Last night in the name of social distancing that is what I did. I couldn’t help compare General Turgidson’s argument for preemptive nuclear strike “ten to twenty million dead, depending on the breaks” to Trump’s “if we could hold that down to 100,000 and 200,000, we altogether have done a very good job.”    

     Just so we’re on the same Trump/Turgidson tag team page here — we are talking body counts. Scarier yet, Trump’s new statistical revelation may prove — like his earlier packed churches all over our country by Easter hallucinations — aspirational at best.    

     Given the Grand Equivocator’s pathological allergies to truth, no one really knows what he’ll say next. I, for one, know not what future pearls of sophist wisdom might spew from the cleaved lips of our new General Turgidson. I do suspect those words will prove more unnerving than all the chilly stuff found in "Dr. Strangelove."    That’s because, unlike "Dr. Strangelove," Donald Trump isn’t fiction.