To the editor:

Trump has alienated our good neighbors and friends: Canada and Mexico; spoke of owning Panama, taking Greenland, removing Palestinians from Gaza and making a resort; insulted our Western European allies, demeaned NATO; called Zelenskyy a dictator who started the war, excluded him from negotiations to end the war, voted against the UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion, betrayed friends, befriended Putin.

Unelected billionaire Elon Musk prances around with a chainsaw claiming to eliminate “waste and fraud” — barging into government agencies with his “bros,” young men knowing only technology — within the Treasury, Department of Education, Social Security, Labor Department, forcing resignations, firing thousands of nonpartisan workers, allowing access to personal, classified, “secure” information and depleting money from the IRS, National Parks and Veterans’ Services, stopping essential work in health and human services, science research, NOAA (weather), FAA (protecting air travel) … creating fear, chaos and danger.

Who are these arrogant bullies? Closing USAID, our “soft diplomacy” connecting us to the world, 1% of our national budget providing medical and humanitarian aide, saving millions from malnutrition, TB, HIV, Malaria, Ebola…

Food from our farmers sits rotting, our manufacturing supplies are undelivered. The money claimed to have been saved will now be used to give $4 to $5 billions of dollars for tax cut to millionaires and for rounding up and deporting immigrants, some who have lived here for decades, who have worked in our farms, factories, hospitals and restaurants, who are building our houses and bridges.

It’s clear who has “their man”: those consumed with greed will pay lower taxes, have regulations protecting our air, water and earth removed, and will not be pursued for consumer fraud. Christian right-wing nationalists will impose their dogma. And white male supremacists — like the Proud Boys and Oath keepers whom Trump pardoned — will be on our streets, a danger to us all. And who will suffer will become clear: workers, veterans, farmers, nurses, children, the old, the disabled, gays and lesbians and trans people, educators, scientists. We will lose our rural health clinics, our arts, our free press, our democracy and our biodiverse earth. Our children will ask: How could we not see, not know, not care?

PBS filmmaker Ken Burns was asked why he made the documentary “The U.S. and Holocaust.” His answer: “You see the people cheering Hitler, giving the Nazi salute? They were like us and we could be like them.”

Vance spoke to and applauded the neo-Nazi party in Germny; Musk gave the Nazi salute; Trump pardoned the violent insurrectionists attacking police and the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. MAGA Republicans voted for Trump’s unqualified and dangerous cabinet picks, their silence complicity. Voters cheered Trump and elected him to be our president.

Bernice Mennis

Fort Ann