DEAR EDITOR:

Lone Star citizens are proud to say “don’t mess with Texas.” They should say it to the political hacks of their state government, who openly admit that their gerrymandering of voting districts is meant to “improve our party’s political power” at Trump’s direction. Since when do the governing members of a small number of party poobahs determine which votes count for all Texans? It’s been an unfortunately long time.

Prior to the power-grabbing influence of 47, gerrymandering, like the electoral college, underwent multiple attempts to modify or end it as practiced by political parties. Most attempts were quashed entirely or gutted into uselessness before passage. Voting district lines have been drawn by both parties with an eye to maximizing electoral votes every ten years as a “gentlemen’s agreement” of sorts that now stands with 17 states choosing their own redistricting procedures and times. Trump tries to bend them to his need to gather all power to himself.

He does this with executive orders to send his masked secret police, now funded by $75 billion of your tax dollars, to terrorize legitimate citizens not to enforce law, but to discourage any resistance to his normalizing abuse of your rights under the Constitution and due process of law.

He does this by federalizing your neighbors serving as citizen soldiers in National Guard units and commanding them to make armed responses to non-existent emergencies. The point being to blow up his alleged law and order image as a tough guy. He evaded any military service for himself while belittling men and women who have given their lives for our country as “losers.”

He does this by threatening financially ruinous lawsuits against individual citizens by siccing “his Department of Justice” on them and appealing every decision that doesn’t go his way.

He does this by demanding historical records, economic statistics and cultural milestones bow to his uninformed beliefs, bankrupted business skills, rewriting of historical and scientific facts, and Philistine tastes. It’s “1984” for the 2000s.

He does this by attacking any legislation seeking to maintain voter rights. He has accepted the advice of Putin — a murderous dictator and victor of nearly 30 years of near unanimous “reelection” — who tells him mail-in-ballots are always fraudulent.

He is a sham built from incompetence, relentless pursuit of self-interest, less than a nodding acquaintance with truth, and an unfeeling ruthlessness to undermine law, learning, science and empathy. It’s getting late for all citizens to stand in protest and finally command, “Donald Trump, you’re fired.”

JIM CARTWRIGHT

Canfield