There is some similarity between Putin and Trump. Putin wants to occupy part, if not all, of Ukraine, a country his military is trying to destroy. If he succeeds, he will rule over a virtual cemetery and take his place in the Hall of Infamy with other despots. If “pride goes before destruction,” delusional imperial ambitions precede a slaughter of innocents.
Trump’s sacrilegious claim to be the only person who can “save the nation” in defense of “freedom” would turn the dream of a unified America into a civil nightmare, since he means by “freedom” the power to eliminate all who oppose his vision of America as an exclusive golf club for white nationalists, evangelicals, bona fide heterosexuals, para-militarists, antisemites, asylum seekers, new immigrants, and those who think of book-banning as a form of education.
His America would be incapable of functioning as a preeminent nation to which oppressed and persecuted people around the world still look with hope for “salvation” and “freedom” as defined by Lincoln, “of, by, and for the people,” not any one person or one group.
We can disagree about the meaning of key words, but Putin and Trump would eliminate those who don’t worship at the altar of their demagogic slogans. They would replace oppositional diversity with the needs of their monomaniacal egos; and too many people, who feel threatened by the new constituencies of an evolving America, are willing to surrender their identities in exchange for the illusion of self-importance through an identification with these two Orwellian Big Brothers.
The former president needs to read more enlightening books instead of clinging to his “brilliant mind” boxes as proof of his superiority.
Classified documents may be his security blanket, but his attachment to them puts the country at risk.
Howard R. Wolf
Amherst, New York