Leaving U.S. understandable, but I’m staying
I, too, am saddened by Donald Trump’s reelection, but I’ll stay in America. Still, Todd Copilevitz’s sentiments (“I’m not leaving my America. I’m leaving Trump’s.”) are understandable. Authoritarianism is on the rise around the world and here in a nation that claims to be “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
In 1935, author Sinclair Lewis — the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for literature — wrote a novel titled “It Can’t Happen Here,” a chilling tale of America under the iron heel of a fascist dictator. The book was a work of fiction, but it is a prescient warning for Americans today.
In the novel, Lewis said America was “ripe for a dictatorship,” and he wrote that “a country that tolerates evil means — evil manners, standards of ethics — for a generation, will be so poisoned that it will never have any good end.”
In these times, it’s easy to see what Lewis meant when he said, “I love America, but I don’t like it.”
ED TANT, ATHENS
Fears of America’s demise driven by media
Todd Copilevitz’s troubled Nov. 24 essay, “I’m not leaving my America. I’m leaving Trump’s.” sadly shows the results of media-spewed fear, loathing and ideology regarding President-elect Donald Trump. Copilevitz and his family are fleeing to Northern Ireland because of the dictatorial wasteland the media have convinced the psychologically vulnerable a second Trump presidency will create in America.
Never mind the media’s unfulfilled lies about how Trump’s first presidency would cause America’s demise. Trump won’t let a second chance slip through his fingers! “Run, Forrest, run!” becomes the media’s mantra, just as Jenny yelled at Forrest Gump when the bullies were after him in that other make-believe story.
America is a free country; one’s free to leave it. I hope Copilevitz’s move provides some peace to an obviously rattled mind. And when America remains free and becomes a hoped-for revived America under Trump’s leadership, perhaps Copilevitz’s paranoia will subside, but I doubt it.
GREGORY MARSHALL, MARIETTA
