Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, September 19, 2020

12

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, September 19, 2020 


STUART TOLCHIN

TOUGH DECISIONS

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

PRODUCTION

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

DISTRIBUTION

CONTRIBUTORS

Stuart Tolchin 

Audrey Swanson

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee

 
Trying to stay calm in a time of stress like many 
of you in Sierra Madre I am having to make some 
very tough decisions. With the helicopters overhead 
making such annoying noise and the police cars 
going up and down the street broadcasting words I 
cannot quite hear it is really tough for me to decide 
what books I want to bring with me when we are 
finally forced to evacuate. Have you ever wondered 
what books the especially literate Jews took with 
them to Auschwitz or Dachau? I have never before 
wondered and wonder why I am wondering now. 
I just learned that the order mandating 
an evacuation in the Upper Canyon was the result of 
a misunderstood direction to remove all non-resident 
lookie loos and was, mistakenly taken as an instruction to remove all residents 
thus causing all kinds of confusion and stress. Wonderful! My wife is no longer 
threatening to disconnect and pack up the computer and I may be able to complete 
this article. Before returning to the decision about the book I should share with you 
my worry that I have not called my mother to assure her I am okay. She died in 2011 
but my need to call still persists to reassure her when I need reassuring myself.

 There is a television commercial that shows repeatedly with a man involved 
in a frenzied fight with bad guys of all variety while speaking over the phone with 
his mother who lives in a world of comfortable normalcy and perpetual discontent. 
This commercial seems to reflect my indecision as to what book to bring. Do I want 
a book which reflects my actual present reality of worries about fires and medical 
conditions including the pains in various parts of my body reflecting strenuous 
lifting associated with packing, unpacking, and repacking. Do I want a book that 
reminds me that my blood sugar numbers are completely out of control such that 
even my iPhone tells me to do something to normalize the reading. I am advised 
to be sure to get a good night’s sleep and to go out and walk or exercise as possible 
ways of lessening stress. Hysterical don’t you think? It’s so smoky outside that my 
wife had to put on two or three masks just to go outside and pick up the Sunday 
papers. In addition to the nearby raging fires, the 
Covid epidemic, and the unimaginable political mess I have had a very disturbing 
week. In association with the series of interview articles which now accompany my 
regular weekly columns I have been conducting interviews which delve into subjects 
that usually are not discussed with me. I have learned that the high price of medical 
services and prescription medications result from corrupt practices. I have learned 
that at medical research facilities possible evidence of effective preventive medications 
are withheld until it is certain that patents can be obtained. I was also told that more 
fire fighters died resulting from jurisdictional rivalries between agencies than from 
anything else.

 I am not sure I understand their reasons but the people that I spoke to are 
people I respect and were very sincere. Opposing their sincerity is the nonsense play-
acting I see on all television news stations where there is so much sensationalizing, 
exaggeration and outright lying that it all makes me sick. The only alternative is to 
turn on the repeated televised falseness of sporting events played in empty stadiums 
utilizing canned crowd noises and pictured cutouts and taped reactions instead of 
actual fans. It all seems so phony! 

 Hooray, that last sentence makes clear to me the book I must choose. Catcher 
InThe Rye, the favorite book of my late High School years, in which the phoniness and 
lying of the adult world drives a young man crazy. Well, I am no longer young but it 
certainly feels like I am going crazy and not alone. stuarttolchin@gmail.com 


JOHN MICEK

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LOSERS? SUCKERS? TERRORISTS? 
ANARCHISTS? MEET THE REAL 
FOLKS BEHIND TRUMP’S INSULTS


Ty Rewolinski doesn’t look like a loser. Or a sucker.

Standing on a Harrisburg street corner outside the headquarters 
of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, Rewolinski looks like 
what he once was: A U.S. Marine Corps sergeant who served 
his country in Iraq. He’s tall and broad and self-contained. 
His eyes are alert. A silver cross dangles from his neck.

A few minutes before we started our conversation, I’d heard him mutter under his 
voice, “I’m no loser.”

It seems like an entry point. So I ask him him what he thinks of the story in The 
Atlantic, since corroborated by several other news organizations, that the current 
commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump, believes soldiers are “losers” and 
“suckers.”

“It makes me feel horrible,” he said in a quiet and even voice that might as well be 
shouting out loud.

I keep coming back to the quiet directness of his answer. A Marine sergeant, who’s 
likely seen terrors that none of us will ever see, feels “horrible,” because of what the 
commander-in-chief is alleged to have said about him.

And right there, that’s the human cost of living in Donald Trump’s America.

Like all bullies, Trump has dehumanized the people behind his insults and jibes. 
And it’s exacting a price on their – and our – souls.

During a press conference from the White House’s South Portico last week, Trump 
pushed back hard against his critics, growling that “only an animal” would say such 
things about America’s service men and women, and our fallen soldiers.

“The story is a hoax, written by a guy who’s got a tremendously bad history,” Trump 
said, of Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg, the story’s author. “The magazine itself, 
which I don’t read, I hear is totally anti-Trump … He made up the story, it’s a totally 
made-up story.”

But is it so hard to believe? Really?

In nearly four years in office, and on the campaign trail before that, Trump has 
smashed through one norm after another. He mocked the appearance of former 
GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, saying “Look at that face! Would anyone 
vote for that?” He referred to onetime White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman 
as a “dog.”

He’s called Mexican migrants “rapists.” He’s invented a playground nickname for 
each of his political rivals. He’s used a racial epithet to refer to Sen. Elizabeth Warren. 
He once mocked a disabled New York Times reporter.

Trump, who has never served, trashed former Defense Secretary James Mattis as 
“the world’s most overrated general.” Former National Security Adviser John Bolton 
was alternately “incompetent,” a “wacko” and “a disgruntled boring fool who only 
wanted to go to war,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

So is it really inconceivable that Trump, who has compared avoiding sexually transmitted 
diseases to fighting in Vietnam, and who derided the late Sen. John McCain, 
who endured unspeakable torture during his time as a prisoner of war, would really 
talk that way when he thinks the world isn’t listening?

Destiny Brown doesn’t look like an anarchist or looter. But if Trump saw the grandmotherly 
Black woman in the bright yellow Black Lives Matter t-shirt, that might 
well be how he’d describe her.

After all, he’s done it before.

“Look at what happened in New York, look what happened in Chicago. All Democrats. 
All radical left Democrats,” Trump said during a rally in New Hampshire last 
month. “You know what I say about protesters? Protesters, your ass. I don’t talk 
about my ass. They’re not protesters, those are anarchists, they’re agitators, they’re 
rioters, they’re looters.”

“We’re not violent,” Brown told me emphatically. “It’s so sad with race and how it is 
in the world now.”

Brown says she’s looking to Biden to heal a badly fractured country. Biden, she says, 
“will smother the flames.”

“I believe the president that’s in there now, he’s responsible for it,” Brown adds.

She’s not wrong. Try as he might to shift blame, that’s Donald Trump’s America.

An award-winning political journalist, John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania 
Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pa. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com and follow him on 
Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.

TOM PURCELL

CHANGE VOTING AGE TO 
16? TRY 80!


San Francisco residents will vote on a measure in November 
to allow teenagers as young as 16 to vote in local elections.

That’s according to The Hill, which also reports that in recent 
years, two women in Congress introduced measures to lower 
the voting age nationwide to 16.

One argument for doing so is that 16-year-olds are permitted 
to work and therefore must pay taxes – but, unable to vote for 
political leaders, they have no representation regarding how 
their tax “contributions” are spent.

Another is that young people should be able to help shape the world that they will run 
in the not-so-distant future.

Those are fair points. My response: We should raise the voting age to 80.

Youthfulness is wonderful – but not without its challenges where voting is concerned.

In our era of instant mass communication with millions through smartphones, the 
opportunity for misinformation to spread is incredible.

The younger one is, the more likely one is to take for gospel truth anything that appears 
in social media news feeds. Clips from hyperbolic cable news programs, which 
are more interested in ratings than in truthful discussion of our national challenges, 
are hurting our country. In a representative republic, which requires an informed 
citizenry, the uniformed voter is challenging enough. But the misinformed voter risks 
giving political power to people who can do a lot of damage with it.

Critical thinking, which college education should teach, appears to be losing ground 
to uncritical “groupthink.” The younger and more passionate one is, the more one 
may be at risk of “getting facts wrong” and voting for silver-tongued politicians whose 
real goals are their own personal and financial gain.

An 80-year-old is much less likely to fall for such nonsense.

At 87, my father reads a print newspaper and does at least one crossword puzzle every 
day. He reads two or three books a week. His mind is sharp.

He has seen a lot of silver-tongued politicians come and go – and a lot of once-popular 
ideas do a lot of damage to a lot of people.

He remembers the hopefulness of the War on Poverty, for example. We’ve spent more 
than $20 trillion on it since the 1960s, and though it has helped millions avoid poverty 
in terms of food and housing, it has given us too much poverty of the spirit – too 
many broken families and children with limited opportunities to reach their fullest 
potential as human beings.

At 87, your bones ache. You find yourself in long conversations about roughage in 
your diet and good prostate health. You’re in no mood for nonsense. You aren’t easily 
swayed by the passions of the moment. You don’t feel the need to faint at political rallies 
– unless you forgot your nutrition drink that morning.

You’ve paid way too many taxes and seen billions wasted on everything from unnecessary 
wars to pipe-dream programs that enrich lobbyists who get their pals in 
Congress to fund them more than they have done any good.

You know you may not be here much longer. All you care about is what you can 
do to make our country’s future better for your children, grandchildren and great-
grandchildren. And that is the lens you would use to evaluate candidates and ideas.

We would be better off as a country if our voters did more cranky critical thinking and 
indulged in less feel-good emotional nonsense.

Bring on the octogenarian voters!

 Tom Purcell, author of “Misadventures of a 1970’s Childhood,” a humorous memoir 
available at amazon.com, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist 

Send comments to Tom at Tom@TomPurcell.com.


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Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com