OPINION: It's time to return decency and honesty to our country

Joe Soares lives in Fall River

If you vote Trump this November, you are endorsing the insult of our war heroes and the men and women in uniform. You are endorsing his racism, his bigotry, his cruel policies and his daily insults and lies. You are endorsing a man who fails at every level to protect Americans from a deadly virus and shows no remorse over lives lost. You support his love and admiration of murderous dictators and those who interfere with our elections and pay for dead American soldiers.

Trump incites racial clashes rather than diffuse them. He promotes a huge disparity in income from the wealthy to the working class. He has thrown children in cages and rips them away from their families. Trump’s obsession with the supposed dangers of people of color, particularly immigrants or his often-so-called left-wing extremists, ignores reality. Right-wing extremists have committed the most terrorist attacks in the United States since the 1990s.

He backs the 17-year-old who used an assault-style rifle opened fire on people during a protest in Wisconsin, killing two and wounding a third. Trump maintains the protesters "violently attacked him." Maybe they did, but when they attacked him, he had already shot someone. I would label the 17-year-old a vigilante, a member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority because they think the lawful agencies are inadequate. I know vigilantes are used in countries to protect corrupt governments; I never thought this would happen in America.

In a recent press conference Trump blamed "blue states" for increasing the nation's death rate from coronavirus, suggesting that if "you take the blue states out" of the equation the United States would be far more competitive with other countries. Excuse me Mr. Trump, as President Barack Obama delivered in his keynote address at the 2004 DNC, “We are not Blue States, we are not Red States, we are the United States.”

Sorry that Trump supporters have bought into his rhetoric. When asked any sort of difficult question, he cannot and will not answer. He will then verbally attack the interviewer. Any news printed about him, including direct recorded quotes, is called “fake news,” a “hoax” or whatever else his limited vocabulary will allow. He is a coward who is only tough at his rallies and in his pathetic Tweets. Like his hero Vladimir Putin he wants to stay in office forever.

We must unite and vote this despicable despot little man out of office. Let’s return respect, honesty and decency to our country. Vote for Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States and truly Make America Great Again.

Joe Soares

Fall River