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Readers Speak

Masks a new arsenal

Dear Editor,

Some folks may think of Patriots with muskets near July Fourth. Defiant words penned to delicate paper were backed up by iron, gunpowder, lead and the blood of Patriots. Cloth masks and sanitizer seem wimpy weaponry compared to iron and gunpowder. But those are the weapons we have against the coronavirus, until bigger guns arrive. The colonists probably wished for more and bigger cannons, but fought with what they had.

A scene from Private Ryan shows Tom Hanks valiantly firing a pistol at a German tank. That is the stuff Americans admire. In real life, Tom Hanks was sickened by the coronavirus, and thankfully recovered.

Cannot be sure, but possibly Tom wishes more masks and sanitizer had been utilized.

Gary Finger,

Warren

He has many flaws

Dear Editor,

His speeches are imprecise and without substance. He salts his speech with counter-words such as “fantastic, tremendous, terrific, incredible, unbelievable and, using one of the most overused counter words of all: amazing, a general term of approval or disapproval without reference to it’s exact meaning, a word used by so many and applied to so many concepts as to be almost meaningless. These kinds of words sprinkled into his already barren vocabulary are offered to mean anything in general but nothing specific. And he sometimes repeats these

counter words two or three times in the same sentence, on and on. He is expert at his kind of theatrical-sounding, incoherent talkativeness known as claptrap, the kind of insincere speech intended to cleverly trap his base into clapping for him.

Watch him swell. He’s an expert at this kind of pretension. When he speaks from a teleprompter, however, his monotone voice is bored, mouthing concepts unfamiliar to him.

He attacks peoples character. But he almost never attacks ideas, which he seems not to comprehend. He slanders anyone who dare disagree with him. His minions are apparently too afraid of him to talk back. He occasionally uses the rhetorical device of stressing some unknown point by suggesting that it-the unknown point-is too obvious to mention, thus adding a layer of mystery to the subject he is covering-by covering it up. Those if us who notice what he accuses others of is a field guide to his faults.

His speech is uncultivated. What he says has little impact on those of us who believe words have meanings. A person’s syntax when speaking is a reflection of that person’s intellect and education.

He is misleading. He says: “Things are happening.” What things is he referring to, we wonder. He says: “Every thing I’ve said has been proven true.” What things, we wonder; proven true by whom? when? He says, ”Wonderful things will be happening soon because of the great decisions I’ve made.” What things will be happening, we wonder; what great decisions?

He has a temper. He has a tantrum whenever one of his minions or a journalist asks a question that he either doesn’t know the answer to or that gets too close to one of his lies or exaggerations. All in all, he is a living palimpsest tablet, overwriting what he said the day before with a different story, leaving behind incomplete erasures of a previous position or statement.

He is trite. He speaks endlessly, rambling platitudes which appear on the surface to be sound but which have no ring of truth.

He is a braggart. He continuously extols his intellect, his generosity, his regard for minorities, on and on, mouthing a narrow variety of platitudes. And his arguments more often than not, have no ring of truth. And he finishes a brag by mouthing such pat statements as “that I can tell you.” The root of his bragging is that when no one notices his accomplishments he has to either brag or risk bursting an artery.

He is often misinformed, and more often uninformed. As a result he is impatient with people who have knowledge he lacks. It has been said that impatience is not wanting to understand what one doesn’t understand.

His behavior is abominable: He is difficult, ruthless, cunning, unrelenting, shameless, mocking, defiant, unprincipled, truculent, vainglorious, and mercurial.

He has the form but not the substance of the shoes he pretends to fill. His behavior causes uncounted numbers of people to be sad-to be weary of the woes of this new world he is coloring in.

He is an example of a smart man made stupid by flaws in his character.

He is always exaggerating himself: Notice the bold size of his signature.

He has no regard for woman, or for other men for that matter.

He is an admitted nationalist.

He congratulates himself He, a self-acclaimed genius, would have us believe he is a great man. Actual geniuses allow others to call them so if they please. He is a demonstration of a failure of imagination.

He is guilty of nepotism, which is illegal, but he gets away with it, employing his relatives for jobs far beyond their capacity to understand let alone perform.

He’s vulgar.

He professes to believes he was chosen to be God’s representative on earth, to rule over all. However, with all His power He would do well to remember that a hurricane can’t stack two dimes.

An election is coming up.

Joe Priddy,

Scandia

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