President Trump isn’t leading a ‘golden age’

With regard to a recent letter to the editor by Washington County Supervisor Jack Seward, I wonder if he and others who believe we’re entering America’s “golden age” really see what’s happening around us.

Here’s what I see: Funding for science and education is being slashed. Medicaid, the only healthcare many poor depend on, is being slashed. Long-admired institutions of higher learning are being defunded and smeared as “woke.” Immigrants, many of them law-abiding, taxpaying, essential workers, are being beaten and seized by masked ICE thugs, inhumanely detained in unthinkable conditions, and deported without constitutional due process to countries they never lived in. Some are being held at the Washington County jail. Shamefully, some being swept into the net are actually American citizens.

Media outlets are in some cases failing to push back against threats of minimally substantiated lawsuits, legitimately calling into question their hard-won credibility. The US President and his family are cashing in on the office, raking in billions selling wildly overpriced merchandise as well as unstable crypto currencies that grift off of small investors and reward ultra wealthy insiders. And in a horrifying turn, the administration and Congress seem to be working hard to cover up associations with a disgraced financier who sexually abused underage girls.

These are only a few examples of the deep and wide corruption I am seeing. And much of this is taking place because the US Congress, Senate, and Supreme Court are too afraid to provide the checks and balances to the Executive branch that make our democratic system of government work for all.

These distressing developments are hardly the hallmarks of a golden age, but instead are paving the way for authoritarian rule and the deterioration of civil society, our economy, and our standing in the world.

–Eileen Beran, Kalona