We now have a culture poisoned by racism, 60 years after landmark civil rights legislation. The investigative outfit ProPublica reports that Trump’s shrinking Education Department refuses to resolve complaints of hateful rhetoric in our schools; the only two Black students in a small district in Ohio being called the N-word by white peers starting on their first day, hearing slurs like and being told to go pick cotton. 

“And at a school in Illinois, white students included Confederate flags in their PowerPoint presentations for class assignments,” according to the the report. I trust that’s not happening in Maine, where respect rules, at least in public. 

What happened? Writes conservative columnist Bret Stephens earlier this month: “We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House,” and the MAGA crowd is still with him.

Illustrating that divide, a Trump fan claims that some diners avoid a local breakfast diner because it’s too conservative. How does he know? Camos only allowed? T-shirts carrying profane, hyper-masculine backing for assault weapons? Bacon so crispy you can hear someone chewing it five tables away? Diners picking their teeth with actual nails? Hunters traipsing in with deer blood on their hands? (Yes, those are exaggerated caricatures. I have voted Republican and hunted deer and gone to dances at Legion halls.)

Instead of glaring at each other across this yawning divide, maybe we could all move closer to the political center and talk about it. That would be the patriotic thing to do.

Dave Griffiths
Mechanic Falls