To the Editor:
Re “The Predatory Friend: Trump Treats Europe as Anything but an Ally” (news analysis, April 6):
The article points out a puzzling and disturbing aspect of Donald Trump’s presidency: his preference for cozying up to longtime foes of this country as if they were our friends while treating our actual friends as if they were enemies or disobedient subjects.
It makes sense for him to try to improve relations with our adversaries if we can do so without compromising ourselves. It does not make sense for him to mock and bully our friends. Unless, of course, Mr. Trump sees the enemies of this nation as his friends and its friends as his foes — in which case the United States is in mortal peril as long as he remains president.
I’m not quite willing to go that far, but I can certainly understand why at least some of Europe’s leaders might harbor such thoughts. Unless Mr. Trump reverses course, whoever follows him in the Oval Office will at the very least have a lot of fence-mending to do.
Eric B. Lipps
Staten Island
To the Editor:
It’s tragic that most of us continue to analyze Donald Trump’s words and actions as we did his predecessors’. Regardless of their politics or philosophy, they were all rational, thoughtful people.
Mr. Trump is neither rational nor thoughtful. He needs to bully, break and hurt people and institutions to feel he’s in control, and being in absolute control is essential to his sense of self.
We must understand that simple fact in order to develop effective ways to save our country from hate-based authoritarianism inflicted by a child who never grew up.
John Kircher
Washington
To the Editor:
Having Donald Trump as president is like being a passenger trapped in a car driven by a reckless teenager who has no business driving.
He doesn’t know the rules of the road, either doesn’t understand or refuses to follow signs or traffic signals, won’t take advice from others and has a dangerous problem with road rage. But he is absolutely convinced that he is the greatest driver in the world.
Stephen A. Silver
San Francisco
Protect Our Rights
To the Editor:
Re “Don’t Roll Your Eyes at Due Process,” by David French (column, April 7):
I wholeheartedly support Mr. French’s opinion. The rights of all individuals in our country must be protected or the Constitution becomes meaningless.
I was reminded of the late Justice William Brennan’s visit to my law school class around 1990, when he told us that one of his pet peeves was hearing others complain that a defendant was deemed not guilty on a “technicality.”
That technicality, he said, means that a fundamental right was denied a defendant as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. I consider this such an important insight that I still share it with my law students decades later.
Susan Zinner
Chicago
The writer is a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Northwest.
Library Agency Shutdown
To the Editor:
Re “Trump Moves to Shutter Library Agency” (Arts, April 2):
I wonder how many Americans who voted for the current administration had any idea that they were voting to destroy our fragile democracy.
Closing the Institute of Museum and Library Services is just one example in a list of many other closures (for example, the Department of Education), that reveal an anti-intellectual climate and limit freedom to gain access to historical and scientific knowledge.
If we carefully examine what is being chipped away piece by piece, it is obvious that our democracy, as we have grown to know and love it, is teetering on the brink of destruction. Will we wake up when it is too late?
Frances R. Curcio
Staten Island
The writer is a professor emerita of secondary mathematics education at Queens College, CUNY.
