Conservativism’s future

This is an appeal to honest, thoughtful, conservatives to do the hard thing in the coming presidential election: vote for understanding and reconciliation over chaos.

Partisan hysteria aside, every concerned voter must take an honest look where we are four years into Trump America. How much more divisiveness can we handle? As James Mattis has said, Donald Trump, “does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us.”

For those who think this is OK because Trump is ” right”, do you really believe in democracy? In our current conflicts over race, there are different deeply held views. How can we survive as a country when our president scathingly supports only one side. Once elected, the success of a president is how he treats those who did not vote for him. Trump has never had any interest in doing that.

We are now at a place where people on both sides of the police reform conflict have been killed. Is this what we want as Americans? Yet our president has said the death of activist Michael Reinoehl was just retribution. This without any sense of a prosecution and trial we all assume is our right. How can this, from our national leader, not terrify us.

Conservatives need to face the fact that they have hitched their fortune to the wrong star. Donald Trump is actually hostile to our system of government. America will remember this when considering conservatism’s future.

James Becker

Spokane