Winners and losers

To the Editor:

None of us likes to lose. Americans love sports and the reality is that our favorite teams lose a great many times. My kids and grandkids played youth and high school football and soccer, and it was always great to win, but I had to put up with the frequent pain of losing. That’s the price we pay to have sports.

At the end of most of the youth games, the losers would congratulate the winners saying “good game” to each player. A player who would refuse to concede that he had lost would have been considered a poor sport. And a kid who would throw a temper tantrum and accuse everyone, including the referees, of cheating him out of a win would be an incredible embarrassment to his team, his parents and everyone. Fortunately, this never happens.

I have voted in 14 presidential elections, and it turns out that my candidates lost half the time. None of the candidates in 13 of those elections, Democrats or Republicans, disgraced themselves by denying they had lost. Each of the losing candidates graciously conceded as soon as the results were clear. That has always been a “great” feature of our political system.

So how is it that we are tolerating behavior from a former president and many of his supporters that we would not accept from a child?

Thomas Beck

Sonora