Jon Oltman: And the takeaway is?

Congratulations to columnist Jon Huer (”How liberty itself killed liberalism in America,” Recorder, March 5), who has once again shown us all how smart he is, and how the America we now find ourselves in is an expected outcome given our history. If we had only listened to him all these years, then … what?

I agree that Donald Trump’s rise to power is no great surprise, given that our nation’s history included genocide of the indigenous people living here, and economic power made possible by the labor of enslaved Africans. We also provided a new home for oppressed people from all over the world, and helped to defeat fascist armies in World War II. One of the first permanent European settlements in America was New Amsterdam (which became Trump’s hometown of New York), and which even then was known for its diversity and liberalism.

I am an American. My opposition to Mr. Trump and his allies is very simple: they oppose and are systematically tearing down everything I believe is positive, good, kind, healthy, and right about this country and the world. What choice do I have but to resist, for as long as I can? If this makes me a “liberal” then so be it. It’s how my parents raised me. So my question to Huer is this: What, in your opinion and vast wisdom, are folks like me to do? Roll over and play dead? Walk around with a sign that says “Doomed Victim of History”?

I think that someone as knowledgeable and wise as Mr. Huer has at least some responsibility to offer practical advice to Americans, whether we are for Trump or not. So far the only takeaway I can get out of his columns is “I’m so smart, and I told you so.”

Jon Oltman

Deerfield