Moved by Obama’s sincerity

Sir — I listened to the wonderful speech from exUS president Barack Obama at the funeral of civil rights campaigner John Lewis.

The sincerity, empathy and generosity of spirit moved me to tears. This is in contrast to the tweets of the present incumbent in the White House.

The wonderful country that was the United States has been brought to its knees by a narcissistic, incompetent and uncaring man.

It will rise again but not if this man is re-elected.

Joe Biden is no Obama but he is a huge improvement on who currently occupies the hallowed position.

Pat Burke Walsh,

Gorey, Co Wexford

Sir — Humanity is both amazing and baffling. We can send a robotic buggy-type vehicle to Mars in times of a global plague to see if there’s signs of past life there. It seems strange to me that we are wasting millions, if not billions, to investigate fanciful notions of life which lived millions of years ago on our nearest planetary neighbour. Why are we funding such missions in a time when us humans can’t seem to unite here on Earth to find a cure for a deadly virus. We can’t even agree to act collectively to find and pursue a strategy to combat

Covid-19, which is plaguing our own planet and bringing about so much death and suffering.

It strikes me that if alien life forms were ever to arrive here on our little spinning globe, they would spend the first week rolling about laughing and then absolutely fleece us.

Mind you, on reflection and in jest, it seems almost plausible to me that certain alien life forms are already in charge of political decision-making in certain quarters — because the incumbent leaders show no signs of humanity, humility or empathy in this era of great crisis. We certainly live in the strangest of Covidean times.

Paul Horan,

School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College, Dublin