LETTERS: Separating families, hold Trump accountable, hard time in America

Separating families violates basic human rights

On March 7, 2017, families started getting separated at the border between Mexico and the U.S. Young children were taken from their parents and put into separate places alone. They slept with foil blankets and in cage-like fences.

This is a violation of basic human rights. These children are too young to realize what’s happening and are terrified because they don’t have their parents with them. It isn’t fair to these families who are looking for a new place to start a peaceful life.

They aren’t harming anyone by staying together as a family. It makes sense to let them stay together instead of separating them. I hope this issue gets fixed and these families are allowed to stay together instead of being forced apart.

They are just here to look for an escape and to provide their families with a peaceful life.

Dyamante Solis-Lozano, Weslaco

 

American public should hold president accountable on Putin, Russia

If a creature behaves like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is likely a duck. If a person acts like a Putin stooge and talks like a Putin stooge, that person is likely a Putin stooge — a person acting to enhance the interests of the Russian dictator and not the interests of the United States.

Trump and his own stooges act like stooges for Vladimir Putin. How many times do they have to falsely deny that the Russian government and Putin are still engaging in continuous cyber attacks on the U.S. before the American public stands up and confronts them for their mendacity? Trump claims that Putin’s Russian government is not an adversary but is a misunderstood aggressor.

Neville Chamberlain waving a document claiming “peace in our time” shows the folly of appeasement of tyrants, even ours. Chamberlain traveled to Germany in 1938 to meet with Hitler and returned with the Munich Agreement, wherein a part of German-speaking Czechoslovakia was relinquished to Nazi Germany in an effort to appease that misunderstood aggressor.

Shall Trump, our Putin stooge, concede the Russian speaking Crimea to this “misunderstood aggressor?” Shall Europe and the rest of the world be endangered by a servile appeasement to a malicious dictator?

A reality TV production does not protect the U.S. Trump treats the presidency as his reality show. The presidency is not about any one individual but about the defense of our constitution, our national security and the American people from enemies foreign and domestic.

Shall we just appease our own misunderstood aggressor in the hope that Trump’s latest assault on our form of government will be his last? I think not.

Unlike Trump, many of us have worn our country’s uniforms in the defense of our country’s interests throughout a grateful world. When the time came, we and our families and friends stood up together to defend and improve our way of life not to return to the bad old days.

Speak up. Register to vote; then vote. Our country needs you.

Ricardo Flores, Edinburg

 

It’s a hard time for most in America

The headline for Albert R. Hunt’s piece, “It’s a hard time to be a never-Trump Republican,” is so sad.

Poor Republicans.

Guess what? It’s a hard time to be a citizen of any or no political party, especially if one is poor, old, black or any color other than white. Or, believe me, even white.

Mr. Hunt writes about the pain of Mitch Daniels, a man with “a distinguished Republican pedigree.” Hunt says, “Before the rise of Trump, he would have been considered by knowledgeable Republicans, conservatives and moderates alike, to be a top-quality candidate for president.” But now, Mr. Daniels says, “I feel homeless.”

So sad.

I’m sorry for what is happening to the Republican Party. I have friends in both major parties and some independents. But I’m not sorry for the Republicans in our Congress and our White House. I am not sorry for Mr. Hunt or Mr. Daniels. The men and women running the show in Washington are Republicans. They work for us. If they could only develop a spine — all of them — and stand up to Trump, I would not need to be sorry for their political predicament. I would respect them.

Shirley Rickett, Alamo