DEAR EDITOR:

The propaganda technique most used by despots is to lie big and often, whether denying wrongdoing or claiming moral high ground and glorious achievement. Eventually, they know people will believe them. To me, this is a clearer description of what government wastes so much of its time, tax dollars and our blood on doing than the less clear term, “gaslighting.” Either way, it sickens me to see what passes for political leadership nowadays.

In her recent book, “Leadership: In Turbulent Times,” Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin profiled Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, highlighting their individual leadership styles. Each of these presidents faced tremendously dangerous and difficult crises in governing and in their private lives.

Each of them found ways to collaborate, negotiate and triumph, together with others, in wars, against social injustice, over an impoverished economy; and national tragedy. Each acted boldly with outward confidence, competence and often against wisdom of trusted advisers. Each set a course of action he believed would serve our country and saw it through, no matter the cost to his well-being or political power. All of them brought our republic through stormy waters to brighter days.

The current occupant of the White House is an incompetent businessman who made a fortune by borrowing from his dad and stiffing investors in failed enterprises. He has acted boldly, with undeserved confidence, to raise our cost of living with foolish trade wars, while riding an improving economy and employment trend begun by his predecessor’s policies. His policies have bankrupted small farms in favor of environment-trashing agribusinesses, while claiming water-saving toilets are responsible for decreasing water supplies and increasing pollution.

He has taken money authorized for the education of children of dedicated servicemen and women to build a useless wall pandering to his followers’ xenophobia. He betrayed the Kurds, who destroyed the ISIS Caliphate, while he claimed victory for himself. He is considered both bully and buffoon by formerly loyal allies and a useful idiot by the world’s most egregious dictators.

He never will do anything for anyone who does not serve him first and foremost. And now he assails our Constitution by abusing the powers of his high office to invite foreign meddling in our election. He has been impeached in the House of Representatives, but he will be acquitted by the sycophants of the Senate, who appear to have buried their oaths of office under the dust of their once-conservative spines.

Remember them all next November, and vote them out, because four more years of this criminal part-time government could result in the loss of your freedom to do so.

JIM CARTWRIGHT

Canfield