LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Not sitting back while 'tragedy unfurls'

I wish to respond to an opinion letter printed on Jan. 29 from Marvin Fortney of Hartly. [“Stop the complaining”] I am afraid he does, like most conservatives, considers his beliefs to be facts. He wants those of us who did not vote for Donald Trump to quit complaining. The biggest mistake he made was when he claimed that there were not protests and constant complaints after the election of Barack Obama. Does he not remember the virtually daily questions about his national origin, his views, and his attempts to get us out of the recession that the Republicans got us into? Up until the election in November, the Republicans repeated endlessly that President Obama had done nothing. Now, they are scrambling around spending time and taxpayer money, as they say, to undo all the bad things Mr. Obama did. If he did nothing, why is there this passionate attempt to undo what he never did? The truth, here, which Mr. Fortney doesn’t seem to understand, is that President Obama did a lot of things, in spite of the obstructions by the Republicans. Another irony is that they are all upset about the Affordable Care Act, and want to undo it; yet, the act is based on the Republican proposal earlier. Obviously, they just don’t want the Democrats to get any credit for it. So, Mr. Trump will apparently have the honor of leading the Republicans into dumping millions of people from needed health care in order to make the Democrats look bad. So, thousands of people will suffer to advance Republicans’ agenda. We are supposed to just sit back and keep quiet while this tragedy unfurls? Also, now, President Trump is trying to stop Muslims from immigrating to the U.S. This certainly appears to me to be a violation of the First Amendment, but the Republicans don’t really care about that. Mr. Fortney concludes that he is “tired of listening to the complaining.” What about all the complaining that went on for the eight years of the Obama presidency? One last thing I want to insert here is to point out that every time we have had a Republican control of government, beginning with President Eisenhower, there has been a recession. All of these recessions began during a Republican administration, and the Democrat that took office had to get us out. You have been warned.

Grover W. Johnson Viola