To the editor:
The extraordinary events coming out of the White House during the last one and one half years reminds me of Goethe’s epic poem “Faust.”
When the antagonist Mephistopheles introduced himself to Faust he said: “I am the spirit who always denies, because everything that has been created is worthy of destruction.”
You see, I vividly remember the constructive policies of the U.S. right after World War II when care packages were keeping millions of people alive. I was one of them. The Berlin Airlift saved Berlin and established the Allied determination to face down the Soviet Union. The Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe and the Tariff and Trade Agreement of 1948 laid the foundation for today’s world trade.
NATO was established in 1949, and in 1950 visionary statesmen laid the cornerstone for the EU.
Those event, were negotiated by true statesmen, bridge builders and unifiers. Not by uninformed whiners and bullies who insulted European leaders behind their back, by folks who did not worry whether the Russian leader liked them or not.
Unfortunately, the present occupant in the White House has removed himself far from the ideals of U.S. policies. We experience with embarrassment how he is being made fun of in England and Finland by huge crowds. We cringe when he denigrates Prime Minister May behind her back and calls Chancellor Merkel a tool of the Russians and Canada’s Prime Minister “weak and dishonest” while gushing over Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, who both know how to stroke Mr. Trump’s sensitive ego and insecurity.
Does he really have to constantly denigrate former President Obama, even blame him for the Russia’s invasion of the Crimean Peninsula?
At the most extraordinarily bizarre press conference with Putin in Helsinki Mr. Trump throws his own intelligence community, Department of Justice and European allies under the bus, somehow dragging Hillary Clinton into his reasoning. Mr. Putin must be celebrating.
To be fair, he does recognize that he is a “very stable genius” and is the “most popular person in the history of the Republican Party.”
JAMES BEHREND
Bainbridge Island
