The murder of our republic

On Saturday, the president of the United States could not find it in himself to instantly repudiate praise by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon David Duke or condemn white supremacists waving Nazi swastikas parading in his name through the streets of an American city. He could only equate “alt-right” bigots and those who oppose them — equally — and condemn violence. My country is adrift with amoral leadership.

And now, at least one purposefully dead in Saturday’s violence, two other members of the police killed in a helicopter crash, and scores more injured. All of us: wounded. The greatest death so far is the murder in real time of our republic at the hands of Donald Trump and his still unrepentant supporters.

I know these people. Like Steve Bannon, I was raised in Richmond, Va., the capital of the Confederacy. We both graduated from Benedictine High School, a military institute. We both spent many a day in the shadow of Monument Avenue’s pharaonic statues to “the glorious dead”: Lee, Jackson, Stuart and Davis. I like to think I learned the right lessons from those tributes. Bannon, clearly, did not.

No words, by anyone, can wash away this filth now opened to the air by Trump. The prejudice and bigotry of the neo-Fascists and white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville used to hide under the stinking rocks of their hatred.

Through his candidacy and now his presidency, Trump has uncovered and given permission to this despicable breed. David Perry, San Francisco