People aren’t always so ‘good and decent’

I have incurred the ire of a letter writer for mentioning his name while calling him out on long debunked conservative claptrap, and, according to another writer, I now run the risk of being labeled a bully for calling a spade a spade, but I digress.

I was enthralled by

Anne Michels’s outstanding letter June 1. Ann enumerates several of her beliefs, beliefs any decent human being would easily agree with.

Ann concludes her letter by asking the same question millions of real Americans ask themselves daily. Basically, the question is: Why good decent persons think Trump deserves to be President?

Ms. Michels and others might not like my answer but the truth is that many so called “good, decent people” are not as good and decent as they appear to be.

Best case, Trump’s rabid supporters might be suffering from a disastrous case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, where uneducated people think they know more than the experts do.

Worst case scenario, and I am not calling anybody a Nazi, but many Trump fanatics exhibit characteristics of the good old German citizens who looked to their Führer for salvation, all the while blaming other ethnic groups for their own personal failings.

Certainly the answer lies somewhere in between those two extremes and perceptive readers know that a truly good and decent person would never support an immoral, racist, inveterate liar, self serving con man and traitor responsible for the deaths of 135,000 (and counting) Americans.

— Jorge Smirnoff, Chico