Letters to the Editor for June 6, 2020

How do we stop this?

I am very grateful for the men and women working as police officers. It’s a hard job. For the few officers that lose control, would a video camera worn on the officers uniform, help prevent violence? Would recording the entire George Floyd incident have stopped his murder?

Accountability, police officers being recorded, might be the solution we need to prevent police brutality and to protect officers from false accusations.

Joanne King

Carson City

Public safety measures constitutional, necessary

In response from a letter from Joshua Dealy. Let’s see if I understand this. You are unhappy. You want to share your unhappiness with a polemical rant. OK.

If, however, you are attempting to persuade others to your cause, perhaps you might consider that calling them names probably won't achieve your desired result. Also, if you are attempting to reach others who might be neutral on this issue, you might stop with the obvious lies.

Court after court, including the Supreme Court, has held that the public safety measures taken and enforced were not only constitutional, they were necessary.

Come on, I know you can do better.

Linda Deacy

Carson City

Turn to scripture

During this time of disease, racism, violence, hatred, and vindictiveness, perhaps we Americans could meditate on a scripture passage from the book of Chronicles.

“If my people, who are called by my name, should humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sins, and I will heal their land.”
II Chronicles 7:14. CEV

Carol Holzhauer

Dayton

Shakespeare on Trump

Seeing the photograph of Donald Trump raising a Holy Bible in his hand in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., and the other one of him there flanked by cronies, I cannot escape from memory of these lines from Act III, Scene VII of Richard III.

Enter GLOUCESTER aloft, between two Bishops. CATESBY returns

Lord Mayor: See, where he stands between two clergymen!

BUCKINGHAM: Two props of virtue for a Christian prince,

To stay him from the fall of vanity:

And, see, a book of prayer in his hand,

True ornaments to know a holy man.

Famous Plantagenet, most gracious prince,

Lend favourable ears to our request;

And pardon us the interruption

Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.

Where Gloucester, aka Richard, has seen off his two contending nephews in the Tower of London and works to scrape favor with the public in his campaign for the throne.

Whether he knows it or not, Donald Trump has this scene down cold. And whether Trump knows it or not, Shakespeare, 450 years ago, had his evil nature down cold.

Michael Goldeen

Carson City