There were no fewer than a half a dozen letters to the editor and op ed pieces in the Salt Lake Tribune onion section that included the words “tyranny” and “racism” – referring to President Trump, of course. There are apparently a contingent of “Hair on fire” progressives in Utah who are now worried about Trump appointing himself dictator for life the same as we have seen in Turkey and Venezuela.

I could go on ad infinitum but the Trib editors selected as “Letter of the Week” a commentary by Steven L. Pappas titled, “The people must check Trump’s tyranny” that pretty much typifies the hyperbolic ventilation of all of them:

“It must be said, voting Republican will result in the continued inhumane treatment of children at the border, the continued rollback of environmental protections, the continued racist policies and rhetoric, the continued racial and partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression, and greater corruption and income inequality. So, is that who we are? Are we better than this?”

I have a visceral need to try to unpack this, so here goes:

1. Whether children being separated from their adult companions after the act of illegally entering the country as required by laws ignored by former administrations is inhumane, is simply a matter of opinion – not of fact. Children are separated until asylum status is examined, until they adults they came with can be validated as their parents and until such things are determined, the children are sheltered and fed in conditions far better than they came from. Many kids experience air-conditioning for the first time in their lives. They are given medical and dental checkups and any needed medicines are administered. These children are living in a state of security and care of which our inner-city kids, many who have been separated from their parents by the criminal justice system, can only dream. If that is “inhumane”, then it is the most humane inhumanity I can conceive.
2. Whether the “rollback of environmental protections” are harmful or helpful to the environment or the people is another opinion, not a fact. Most of what has been “rolled back” were proposes regulations that never were implemented. The GOP is trying to find a balance between the rogue, radical regulatory actions of an EPA that increase cost to the people while returning little or no value to the environment. For once, the EPA leadership has been putting humans and the environment on an equal footing…and so far, Trump’s EPA hasn’t poisoned Colorado’s Animas River like the Obama EPA did.
3. Ahhh – I’m surprised the author didn’t lead with the “racist” charge. It’s all the rage any time a GOP president is in office. I want to know of what “the continued racist policies and rhetoric” consist. In such a racially hypersensitized society, if there were actual racist policies and rhetoric, I would think examples would be legion – but not a single one of the multitudes of opinion pieces in the Trib today lists a single concrete example. Each one simply assumes that Trump is a racist, therefore anything he says or does can be interpreted as racist. It has been said may times that when segments of society are conditioned to accept special treatment as the norm, equality is perceived as inequality. Trump’s racism only exists in the minds of progressives.
4. As to “the continued racial and partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression”, I suppose he means the same gerrymandering each party does when they are in control – and any “gerrymandering” isn’t done at the federal level, it is done at the state level…and Democrat controlled states do it as well. The courts have also approved gerrymandering of racial majority districts to assure an elected official of a particular preferred race. As to “voter suppresson”, wanting to know that the people who are voting are eligible to do so is not “suppression” – but opposing the presentation of an ID to vote while requiring one to get into a Democrat function has become a core belief of Democrats, so there’s that illogic to consider.
5. Greater corruption and income inequality? Give me a break. There hardly could be a more corrupt period in recent memory than the 8 years of the Obama administration. This was a President who apparently used government agencies as his personal police force and blended the party and government entities together to such a degree that they became virtually indistinguishable from each other. And as to “income inequality”, we now have a growing economy where ALL incomes are rising and there is greater competition for jobs.

For once, when a progressive Democrat makes charges of racism, it would be great if they could point to a specific action that supports their accusation rather than their perception of the action…but they won’t because they can’t. They are content to assign a motive that supports their worldview. I always find it interesting that they can’t see tyranny in ever-increasing regulation, the fact that we just had the American government, for the first time in history, mandate the purchase of a product and a former (thank God) president who “legislated” with his pen and his phone.

I think the problem is with definition. Progressives define tyranny very differently. When government loses power, they see tyranny. I define that as an increase in liberty.