“Power Plant Day.” “Bridge Day.” Our president declared it via social media. He’s not someone I follow. I read the post about the Iran war only because it was in the news. It affected me in a bad way. Increased my heart rate and sped up my breathing. I wanted the bad feeling to go away.
So I interrupted a politically conservative friend by sending a Sunday night text. He knows I’m an independent. He calls me before presidential elections because he knows I’ll tell him who I’ll vote for. In this nonelection moment, though, it was me who contacted him. I started my text by saying I had to vent.
I then wrote that some Republican senators must speak out against the president’s post. I left out that it was the president’s expletives and religious sarcasm that upset me, even more than his threat to destroy what Iran’s everyday people need. I added that otherwise, I’d vote again for the Democrats. My buddy replied using the little context I gave.
My symptoms didn’t go away.
Now, days later, I realize I was wrong. Wrong for surprising my friend with anger triggered by someone else. I realize, too, that my political naivete was glaring. I thought back to college and a political science course. I was told the primary goal of politics is to get elected.
Understanding it that way, it’s smart for Republican senators to keep quiet. Many reading this letter already know. The president’s support is what the senators need to get reelected, probably more than they need the support of the individuals who voted for them.
What the senators are doing is they’re ignoring the president. At a minimum, they’re ignoring his wording.
I’m ignoring him too, now. I stopped reading and streaming the news. On social media, I’m skilled at avoiding politics. I told my wife that if something in the world happens — something I really need to know about — to let me know.
Ignoring is the only way I, and even some conservatives, can avoid more president-triggered anxiety.
— James Janus, Glenview
Donald Trump’s brashness
President Donald Trump has been criticized for his brash and sometimes insulting comments, especially when he ad-libs. This criticism is justified, and while we all would like to see him become more mellow and reasonable, this isn’t going to happen.
In many respects, he reminds me of Gen. George Patton, who often put his foot in his mouth but was someone you wanted on your side when the going got tough. There were calls for Patton to be relieved of his command, as there are now calls for Trump to be impeached or declared unfit to be the commander in chief. While everyone would like to see him tamp down his rhetoric, me included, that isn’t likely to happen.
Given the dangers posed by certain countries, we need a strong leader — we can only hope and pray that Trump uses good judgment as well.
— Dan Schuchardt, Wheaton
Kindness, not retribution
Every American who values decency and civility not only in our public discourse but also in our everyday struggles to do what is right and good, should ask President Donald Trump if he has any sense of decency whatsoever. He purports to be a religious man saved by the hand of a loving God, and yet, far too often, his words and actions ring terribly hollow and are sadly deficient in compassion and charity. Insults and personal attacks have no place in our political life and are detrimental to the cooperation and respect so desperately needed.
To celebrate the death of Robert Mueller, a decorated United States Marine and honorable public servant, is reprehensible. To issue a foul-mouthed and threatening rant on Easter Sunday is shameful. We live in perilous times, and in choosing to go to war, we must remember that at best, after careful and widespread consultation, it may become a necessary evil. But there is no glory in war. There is only suffering and death. There should be no smug self-satisfaction in the destructive power of bombs and deafening explosions.
In the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries, untold millions of innocent men, women and children were killed. Millions more suffered, starved and despaired in the rubble that was once their homes, businesses and places of worship. Do the leaders of the world who extol power and might not hear people’s anguished cries to end war and human misery?
Those who invoke God’s name to justify violence are cynically fooling themselves, and, in Pope Leo XIV’s words, they fail to understand that God is merciful and compassionate. He hears the cry of the poor, not the clarion call to epic fury.
The world in all its splendid diversity is God’s wondrous creation, and I can’t help but think that today, God weeps at how cruel we can be to one another. God calls us to kindness, not retribution.
— Thomas M. Forbes, Chicago
Parallels to 1930s history
For those who did not live during the 1930s to experience life under a fascist government in Germany, I offer a few reminders from history: the goals of the Third Reich. The first was expansionism, an aggressive foreign policy to reclaim lost territory and conquer new lands. Next were persecution and genocide, the murder of Jews and minorities, “the other,” using concentration camps, brutality, kidnapping, beatings and destruction of property. Next were economic and social control, the overthrow of the existing republic, control of unions and use of propaganda to enforce ideology. Finally, establishment of an anti-democratic judiciary, removal of trial by jury and the loss of personal rights.
Any similarities to the current situation in the United States are strictly coincidental. However, do feel free to draw your own parallels.
— Marla Cowan, Glenview
No money for health care
According to President Donald Trump, there is no money for Medicare/Medicaid, help for people to pay health care bills, but there is plenty for his personal war, a reopening of Alcatraz and (of course) tax cuts.
Insanity.
— Mark Wolfinger, Evanston
Illinois Medicaid enrollees
In the coming months, an estimated 400,000 Illinoisans will be at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage — not necessarily because they are ineligible but because the federal government is making the system harder to navigate. This will put insurance further out of reach for many who need it. When people lose health care coverage, the consequences ripple outward, affecting our workplaces, classrooms, families and communities.
Beginning in January, adults ages 19 to 64 with limited income and no young children at home will have to jump through new hoops to keep their Medicaid coverage. These enrollees will have to renew their coverage every six months instead of every 12 and also prove that they work, attend school, volunteer or participate in a job training program 80 hours a month. While this seems straightforward, think about how difficult this could be for gig workers, those who hold multiple jobs with variable hours or people who often get paid in cash for jobs like child care, housekeeping or yard work.
Additionally, starting in October, some groups of adult noncitizens, including lawfully present refugees and asylum seekers, will be excluded from Medicaid altogether.
These changes represent the largest federal cuts to Medicaid since the program was established 60 years ago. Recognizing the scale of the impact, Cook County Health convened a coalition of organizations representing health care, business, academia and other sectors to collaborate on a single goal: Help every eligible person keep their Medicaid coverage.
One of the first priorities identified by this group was the need for clear and trusted information, so we created GetMedicaidFacts.com, a new website and communications tool kit designed to help individuals and partners navigate these changes.
The calls to action are straightforward: Medicaid enrollees should renew their coverage when they’re instructed to do so. No changes have happened yet. They should keep their contact information, especially their mailing address, up to date with the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, and they should stay tuned for more detailed information coming from the agency by September.
Health care coverage is about more than paperwork and processes. It’s about ensuring that our family, friends, co-workers and neighbors have the care they need to live full and healthy lives. It will take all of us spreading the word about these changes to ensure that the fewest number of people are impacted.
— Dr. Erik Mikaitis, CEO, Cook County Health
What about the suffering?
Lawyer Michael Peregrine (“Don’t let the marvels of space exploration become passe,” April 8), who calls himself a fan of space, questions why there isn’t more interest in the Artemis II mission at a time when the president threatened, in violation of international law, that “a whole civilization will die” and the ancient cities of Beirut, Tehran and Damascus suffered destruction by bombs paid for with American tax dollars.
He addresses this with one sentence: “There’s a war going on that’s dominating the news cycle.” As it should.
I’m a fan of space too, but as a third-generation Army veteran, I’m also a fan of peace and goodwill on earth. I’m also a fan of clean air and water and preserving our environment for future generations and respecting wildlife as much as we respect oligarchs and scientists who design rockets and high-tech weapons.
Exploring the solar system is fascinating and would be great if we had an unlimited federal budget, but we don’t. All this war spending passes on massive debt to our children, while the president spews the science fiction that we can’t afford better health care, child care or Social Security.
So quickly say “wow” over moon pictures and then engage the tragic reality in pictures of destroyed buildings and dead civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere. Let’s put the focus of American money and intellect on solving these problems and stop ignoring the human misery and suffering in the present that prevents peace and goodwill on earth. Or is that the point — to be distracted by the shiny object in the sky, so we don’t notice the newborn baby in the manger who lacks food and medicine?
An easy way to reduce government spending is to stop wasting tax dollars on the absurdity of putting a military base on the moon or the continual bombing of foreign countries or gratuitous parades, monuments and ballrooms in Washington, D.C.
As the Titanic sank, the panicked passengers were probably thinking, “How come we don’t have more lifeboats? How come this high-tech ship couldn’t avoid an iceberg directly in our path? Why did leaders tell us this ship was unsinkable, when it wasn’t?”
I doubt they were looking up at the sky, thinking, “Maybe one day this great nation will land on the moon.” This time, let’s save the Titanic.
— Franz Burnier, Wheaton
Human-led space exploration
I read Michael Peregrine’s opinion piece on the Artemis II mission with interest. As he suggests, contrary to my history, I have paid relatively little attention to the first crewed trip to the moon in over 50 years.
I grew up with the U.S. space program. I had a map of the solar system on my bedroom wall. I had the kids’ books about space travel (especially the Willy Ley ones that were discount-priced), in which I faithfully logged each launch in my 8-year-old scrawl. I even remember the failed attempt to launch the first Vanguard satellite.
I loved space-travel science fiction, like a TV cartoon series in which the protagonists search each planet in the solar system. To this day, I occasionally claim that the original Mr. Spock was my role model.
I was an enthusiast of all phases of the U.S. space program until, in the 1990s, I was listening to the NPR program “Science Friday.” A guest commented that “we could colonize Antarctica more easily than we could colonize Mars, and why would we want to colonize Antarctica?”
That bit of common sense punctured the crewed space-travel balloon for me. Since then, for me, it has been robots, “yes,” people, the accommodation of whom greatly raises the cost of space exploration, “no.” My interest in close-up views of the surface of Pluto was not diminished by the on-site absence of humans.
I think that the idea of commercial exploitation of the moon is absurd. The high cost of living there and shipping costs would sink the attempt. Just getting humans to Mars is orders of magnitude more difficult, and the trip could have devastating physical and psychological effects on crew members.
What would we have if we get there? Colonization has become only slightly less impractical in my lifetime. If we have the technology to colonize Mars, we have the technology to solve our problems and stay here.
There is, also, the cynical observation that we have a showman in the White House. Crewed space travel is a great show that distracts from things like the reduction of NASA resources for studies of the Earth, which might prove things that those in power prefer remain debatable.
— Curt Fredrikson, Mokena, Illinois
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