Respect anthem
I am not a big soccer fan but I have tuned into several of the FIFA World Cup soccer matches.
It is refreshing to see that before each match, the teams parade out onto the field, line up, and each team’s national anthem is played. It is nice to see each team standing together, sometimes arm in arm, sometimes with their hand over their heart, and many times the players are singing their countries national anthem.
The players are apparently proud of their country and proud to represent their country in an international competition. I am sure that many of the players disagree with some of the things that go on in their country, but they still show respect for their country when their national anthem is played. Wouldn’t it be great if our players showed the same respect for our country when our national anthem was played prior to the start of a sporting event.
Dwight Sedgwick, North Fort Myers
Political stress
Toxic stress is the medical name for what President Trump is doing to infants and young children by separating them from their parents for weeks or months under stressful circumstances.
Studies by the Harvard Center of the Developing Child have shown that doing things like this can produce lasting effects on early brain development.
Shame on us for being willing to expose infants and young children to this possibility for political reasons.
Robert W. Chamberlin, Fort Myers
Reality TV
Tucker Carlson of FOX News, “… always assume the opposite of whatever they’re telling you on the big news stations.”
Tucker, Tucker, you know what happens when you assume … but we get your point. Who needs to think for themselves when we have state sponsored media to do it for us? Just ask our president.
He starts his mornings with "Fox and Friends," goes to bed with Hannity, tweets whatever he hears, demands action, creates policy, then makes a big production with an executive order rescinding his own policy.
After all, this is reality TV; where Tucker’s opposite world actually exists; where propaganda and ‘alternate facts’ magically become news; where geriatric rants about ‘foreigners’ and lies about ’birtherism’ gets you a trip to the White House and a self-pardon.
Well-informed voters, public education and freedom of the press are threats to autocratic rule. Ignorance means it didn’t really happen. Cover your ears and the Russian thing goes away, trade wars are good, separating families is like ‘summer camp‘ and the sky is green.
Frank Howe, Fort Myers
Our challenge
The current crisis at our Mexican border challenges our national soul. People — not thieves and murderers — brave hardship and danger to flee the chaos in their own countries. They slog across alien miles — no friends there — to seek asylum in the U.S.
Our Customs stations and legal processes prove inadequate. Crowds accumulate. Some steal across our southern border illegally, and become “criminal.”
But we must not lose perspective. These thousands are not nameless masses, shiftless and alien, content to pick cabbages. They are human persons, individuals, refugees, hoping to become American. Family units. Mothers with children. Individuals who have bet their lives on this one long-shot chance to build a better life. Few Americans have ever dared such a challenge.
So let us ask: should they, some of them or all of them, become citizens with us? Could they make it as Americans? Before you toss out a reflex answer, consider: These people, even the illegals, have thrown life, limb, and untold hardship into their gamble for America. They show more “American spirit” than do their brothers and sisters who tolerate repression and stay home.
S.R. Maxeiner Jr., Fort Myers
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