Don't let emotions dictate how you vote

People anguishing over the possibility that Donald Trump will win the election and rule like a tyrant should keep in mind that he’s already served as president for four years and it didn’t happen. Trump is not an unknown, nor is President Biden. Both have served four-year terms, so we can predict with some degree of accuracy what they (or their handlers, in Biden’s case) will do in a second term by looking at what they did in their first.

Furthermore, the “tyrant” label is misplaced. Tyrants like gun control and even confiscation, and they don’t like free speech. It’s easier to rule over a citizenry that is unarmed and silenced, and therefore compliant. So who wants more gun control, and who shouts down speech they disagree with by calling it “hate” speech? The threat to the First and Second amendments comes from the Left, not the Right.

Trump is an insufferable, infantile, petulant, full-of-bluster (add your own adjectives) blowhard. It’s no wonder many people hate him. My first choice for the Republican nominee was Governor Ron DeSantis, who shares most of Trump’s policy positions but few of his personality traits. But what really matters years from now is what Trump leaves behind. Ulysses S. Grant was reputed to be a drunkard, but he won the Civil War. We shouldn’t let our emotions dictate how we vote.

DAVE MUNDELL

Sandpoint