To the editor: Oh, to stay in Jonah Goldberg’s world, the place one may be so blasé as to conclude that President Trump’s zone-flooding can’t go on forever. In his world, one can think about that Trump is extra within the look of quasi-monarchical powers than the fact that if he oversteps, members of his coalition “would possibly break with him,” and that “courts are already demonstrating the bounds of presidential energy.”
Actually? Unqualified, harmful nominees have been confirmed for the Cupboard, Elon Musk has shortly accessed delicate data, and worldwide support has been halted. The courts haven’t any enforcement energy of their very own.
So who or what’s to cease Trump? Maybe it’s going to take ineffectual responses — or no responses in any respect — to a different pandemic and different crises to rein him in. I’m fearful that is the edge required to vary course.
Jennifer Pinkerton, Glendale
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To the editor: No matter one thinks rational about Goldberg’s observations, ask your self the next:
By what measure ought to the leaders and residents of Canada, Denmark, Greenland and Panama assume the publicly said threats to their sovereignty from the president of the world’s strongest nation are lower than Trump “overplaying his hand”?
In keeping with the writer, the supposed consolation afforded these international locations and different nations not but recognized is that Trump’s “coalition would possibly break with him.” The United Nations and the overwhelming majority of its member states are little question grateful for such a robust assertion.
For the file, in Goldberg’s written opinion, nothing Trump has advocated so far ranks as truly having already overplayed his hand. Thus, the “if.”
However, there’s at all times a beachfront apartment at Mediterranean Resort Gaza awaiting anybody who thinks Trump is simply “zone-flooding” and never completely unhinged.
Ted Rosenblatt, Hancock Park
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To the editor: Goldberg opines that Trump can’t preserve his present tempo of motion. I worry he underestimates the extent to which Republicans’ spineless passivity will allow Trump to persist.
There’s a scene in “The Wizard of Oz” the place the Cowardly Lion agrees to enter the Depraved Witch’s citadel, “Depraved Witch or no Depraved Witch,” to save lots of Dorothy. However earlier than doing so, he asks the Tin Man and Scarecrow to do only one factor for him: “Discuss me out of it.”
I envision an analogous scene going down within the properties of some Republican legislators as they head out to the Capitol sure mornings promising that that is the day they lastly converse out defending democracy, “Donald Trump or no Donald Trump.” However, earlier than leaving dwelling, every begs their partner to “speak me out of it.”
Not like the film, there might be no recipients of medals marked “braveness” on this Republican Congress.
Stephen Gladstone, Shaker Heights, Ohio
