James Berkman
Boston
To the Editor:
The point that Donald Trump is the acute stage of a disease that had already sickened the country has been made in eloquent form by a number of writers on The Times’s Opinion pages. And of course getting rid of him will get rid of some of the putrefying effects of his presence in the White House.
But every pandemic has its vector, and I believe that the strongest vector for coarseness of language, dishonesty, conspiracy theories — the list of symptoms is long — is the unedited internet. Words that would never be used in ordinary society have become ordinary, conspiracy theories and rumor that wouldn’t have been uttered openly are now blasted far and wide shamelessly.
Censorship is not really a cure, but a vaccination of sorts is, perhaps, what should be called for. Perhaps more time spent in school on critical thinking and rhetoric may be a start. Perhaps a little more parental guidance would help. I have to leave it to experts to try to find either a preventive or a cure, but to do that, you have to focus on all the vectors.
David Buchsbaum
Wellesley, Mass.
To the Editor:
Re “Faith in One Another” (Sunday Review, Nov. 1):
David Brooks’s column reviews what I consider to be President Trump’s most notable legacy: the normalization of rude. More than the judges he appointed to the federal bench, more than the dangerous foreign policy, more than the seemingly suicidal pursuit of environment-damaging agendas, the president’s lasting legacy to the United States has been to make it permissible to be rude.
The president has led that transformation at the federal level, but his actions and the willingness with which so many in the Republican Party have accepted them have brought those new norms to the local level as well. At a local government meeting I regularly attend, residents and neighbors no longer debate ideas on their merits but instead hurl personal and irrelevant insults at each other. The president’s normalization of rude writ small.
A central concept in Jewish teaching is tikkun olam, meaning to repair the world. Now that Joe Biden has prevailed, repairing the world through a restoration of kindness may be his most important mission.
Sam M. Schneider
Westhampton, N.Y.
To the Editor:
David Brooks professes to be shocked that President Trump has repeatedly pushed past what he considers a floor of decency and gotten away with it. Really? This is nothing new. I recall lies used to attack Max Cleland’s and John Kerry’s patriotism. Racist tropes and memes used to attack the Obama family. Lies about phony death panels. A president using talk of “welfare queens” and “young bucks” to gin up anger and resentment among his base.