Trump’s visit to The Villages on Aug. 6

There is an old childhood adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”  This is Trump’s mantra: he cares not a whit about all the names and surely deserved despicable descriptions of his conduct and verbiage that pillage our democracy and American values.  Now he wants to infest our community with his racism, incompetence and criminality. 

Yes, Trump is a criminal. With allowing his visit in days, this makes all Villagers supporting his ways complicit in being part of a racist society. As for the Developer, that makes for bad business.

Besides his racism directed to those in Congress and our nation’s urban areas, there are many residents here that are ex-military, yours truly included. But yet Trump with his packed Supreme Court just robbed $2.5 billlion from the defense budget to pay for a part of his going-no-where wall that symbolizes hatred and is anathema to the foundations of our multi-cultural and diverse country, just like the Japanese internment camps were decades ago. Remember, as well, Germany, circa 1933? Scapegoating minorities, those of Jewish heritage, slaughtering millions, and pillaging the press nearly a century ago?  This is 2019 and we have a modern day Adolph Hitler-type figure in the White House. Of course it is frightening, but true.

Trump has his base (white, non-college educated?) but there is a majority of this country that is not his base, and those that believe in the foundations upon which our country was built. We must rise up and not allow Trump coming to The Villages to, again, infest the largest retirement community in the country, if not the world.  Yes, protesting his planned visit is a must, but now his presence wherever he goes promotes and invites violence and threatens safety, here for which Sumter County is presumably ill prepared. 

Equally despicable and deplorable is the silence of those in Congress that whimper away for fear of being “scolded” by Trump if they come out publicly against him.

If we have yet to learn from history, we are bound to repeat it.

Is racism, scapegoating minorities and presidential incompetence (don’t forget his incessant lying) something Villagers and its residents want to forget? Heaven help us if the answer is yes.

P.S., I am not a Democrat in case anyone wants to know.

Miles Zaremski is a resident of the Village of Dunedin.