Refuse to accept the unacceptable

An American student visiting North Korea winds up tortured to death. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un disavows knowledge, and President Donald Trump takes him at his word, previously having said he’s

“in love” with Kim. Kim is the world leader who had his uncle killed with anti-aircraft guns, his half-brother poisoned in a foreign airport and is the most viciously repressive dictator on earth. His underlings handling an American prisoner without Kim’s full knowledge and direction? Preposterous.

But Trump took him at his word, like he took Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at his word that he knew nothing about journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s dismemberment and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s word that he had nothing to do with subverting our 2016 election.

But U.S. intelligence services? Their word he doesn’t take. Mainstream media? “Fake news.”

But ...

Why do I bother writing? Doesn’t everyone know all this? With past presidents, I wouldn’t call out everything I didn’t like, merely par for the course. Now I’m resolved to let nothing pass. That would be to accept monstrousness as normality.

Which indeed is what’s happening. Recently a commentator remarked that things that before would have been big scandals hardly even register today.

Example: Trump claimed he couldn’t release his tax returns because they were under audit. That was a lie; auditing is irrelevant to making returns public. But now we learn there was no audit.

Does anyone care? This bombshell went almost wholly unremarked. Showing how inured we have become. Now we just shrug.

I refuse to shrug. I refuse to become inured to the utter degradation of my beloved country. I must bear witness. Frank s. robinson Albany