Not helping situation
To the folks who are protesting because of the presidential election, refusing to accept the time-honored voting system, which, by the way, was one of the most carefully executed--grow up! You can't change the outcome by demonstrating. Save those protests for civil rights. Court judges have already thrown out baseless accusations concerning ballots.
To those of you fighting online/in print (I don't mean just talking about it or presenting your case) for or against either candidate, please stop and grow up.
To those of you who have stopped seeing friends and relatives because of your differing political views, stop talking about it and grow up. You are not helping the situation.
One must accept a lot in life and make the best of it, and only try to change that which is a detriment to our country, which is not this election. We are Americans, not Republicans or Democrats (this is new to some of you, I know). We should not stoop to the "lowest common denominator" of our citizenship. We were all born with a conscience, so use it and grow up.
Now, get to life's business of making the world a better place.
CAROL ANN BONE
North Little Rock
Acknowledge the loss
Trump supporters, please listen to reason: The Department of Homeland Security says the 2020 presidential election was "the most secure in American history." Election officials in all 50 states say there is no evidence of significant election fraud. And 1,000 attorneys, retired federal and state judges, state attorneys general and law professors recently spoke out against the spate of baseless lawsuits from the Trump campaign alleging widespread election fraud.
You can hatch as many hare-brained conspiracies as you want and bandy them about among yourselves. But in the end it doesn't change the fact that you've got nothing. Furthermore, through your actions you are undermining the very sacrifices our veterans have made throughout the years to protect our democracy. The very same sacrifices many of you honored recently on Veterans Day.
Many of you talk big about taking up arms and defending our country against invaders, foreign and domestic. But the real threat to our country right now is your own ignorance. And Trump is now wielding it against the very democratic process that rightly rejected him. And Republican enablers like Gov. Asa Hutchinson continue to court it in order to maintain their positions.
For God's sake! Do the right thing and put the good of your country before the good of your own party, and stop trying to impede a process which has been the cornerstone of our democratic republic for well over 200 years.
Acknowledge that Donald Trump lost, fair and square, and Joe Biden is our president-elect.
STEVE LEWIS
Little Rock
Take look in mirror
After I read the Nov. 16 article about former President Obama's take on the divided United States, I think that he needs to read Bradley Gitz's column in the same ADG edition. Maybe President Obama could look in the mirror to see a real Democrat described by Gitz, and realize why so many people voted for President Trump in 2016 and 2020.
TIMOTHY CLEARY
Tumbling Shoals
Prioritize state health
Governor Hutchinson, I am extremely concerned about the exponential spread of covid-19 in Arkansas, and the fact that your administration has not taken increased public health measures to protect Arkansans. I am aware that your "winter" covid-19 task force started meeting this week, and hope that this will lead to further action.
The current situation reminds me of an oft-cited quote from a Rita Mae Brown novel: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Your messaging and that of the Arkansas Department of Health has used words like "disappointing" and "concerning" to describe the pandemic in Arkansas, and you urge over and over that people follow the public health guidelines. You are doing the same thing over and over again, but the different results you are getting are many more cases rather than fewer, more hospitalizations and more deaths.
I understand that you do not want to "shut down the economy," but why have you not returned to measures employed in the spring--closing restaurants to dine-in customers, closing bars, health clubs and salons, further restricting in-person gatherings, and shifting to virtual instruction--when the cases are so much worse? Clearly, there is not enough attention to the "mask mandate," so why not start enforcing it?
I appreciate your leadership in this difficult year, and I appreciate that none of the choices you face, and we face as Arkansans, are good, but I strongly believe that we have to prioritize the health and well-being of the state's citizens even if there is a short-term economic cost.
RICK OWEN
Little Rock
Lives did not matter
Lawyers, appointed by a federal judge to reunite children separated from their parents at the border, now report that there are 666 children whose parents cannot be found. That's a pretty clear sign that family separation probably was not the answer to the question, "What would Jesus do?"
And yet, more than 71 million Americans and a majority of Arkansas voters said it was OK. By voting for Trump, the driving force behind family separation as a deterrence, these voters said that separating children from their parents was acceptable or, at least, immaterial to their electoral decision. The lives of the separated children and parents just did not matter.
Hannah Arendt had a name for this. She called it the "banality of evil."
EARL ANTHES
Forrest City