Dear Editor,
Most of the time when I am upset, I get over it. Time passes, or I find ways to alleviate the pain, anxiety, or anger. This time it is not working that way. There is a person about to take the seat/the highest office in the land/our USA, who will be the would be “dictator on day one”. There are all kind of conjectures as to why this is so. It seems there is not anything agreed upon at this point. My upset is that a person who has had two juries convict this same person of 34 criminal acts, some against another person and some against the state, will be POTUS in the coming year. (We are the State.) It did not seem to matter to enough of the voting public to deny power and accolade of POTUS to this convicted, not-sentenced person. He was given electoral votes to the highest highest office in the world. (That may change. It may not be deemed the highest office in the world in the future.) There is both great joy and great sorrow at this coming change. Senator Susan Collins made the prescient statement that the forty-fifth may have learned a lesson. I don’t think she meant that the then-sitting POTUS, #45, had learned how to wield a power that demanded absolute fealty over those same men and women in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. He was then, as now, the master of his party. She thought he had some better angels somewhere that would guide him, or at least put on the brakes. No, they finally understood their place to do the bidding and “stand back and stand by”, just as those who attacked the Capitol did until they were released by POTUS #45 to charge the Capitol chambers.
I am disheartened, but I am here. I will use the time as I have learned from those who have been disheartened and almost crushed. I will learn from what is called the fringes that I can live, and that the arc may or may not bend to a better time. Still, the universe is large (understatement). The process will continue. I will not leave, as some in past times were forced to do. I will be here.
Linda Guffin
Downieville