Greg Jayne’s boomers column has prompted thoughtful reader letters about who is responsible for our country’s political and economic problems (“Boomers making country go bust,” The Columbian, Nov. 17). Score one for the printed media.
If boomers and others of voting age bear blame, it is in letting themselves get snookered by the influence peddling of big-money interests and their paid-for politicians. A viable democracy depends on voters being willing and able to think critically about what they read and hear. Much of America seems to have lost that skill and fallen prey to the fear-mongering of Donald Trump and his enablers.
Trump is proving to be an eager student of Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin. In the Washington 3rd Congressional District, Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler ingests and repeats whatever Trump is peddling. Surely, she recognizes Trumpism’s threat to our free society, yet she cravenly pretends not to see it.
While we still have a democracy, we must vote Trump and his apologists, like Herrera Beutler, out of office. If the country slips under Trump’s authoritarian rule, what is Jaime going to say — she didn’t see it coming?
