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Letter: Cruz is right: Vote your conscience
Op-Ed · July 28, 2016


What comes of these political conventions?


Our society does not throw people in prison because someone does not agree with them. The spectacle of the mob on the floor of the Trump convention fanatically contending a need to imprison a candidate of the other party reveals a danger to the American people’s lives that comes of a cult of personality joined with a hate-filled man in the manner that in the past produced a ghastly Nazi Holocaust in Germany.

This hysteria joined with Trump’s histrionics presented as ugly of a display as that of the mob of Scripture that screamed “crucify him.”

And then and there in response to that chant, two of our fellow sinners were atop Calvary nailed to crosses on the right and left of the crucified perfect one.

And then the Sun went dark and the curtain of the temple was torn in two marking that as day of the Sorrow of sorrows, it was neither the first nor last on which some suffered greatly from the cruelty inflicted by others.

Many decades prior to that dark Friday thousands of slaves struggling to be free were crucified along 130 miles of the Appian Way from Rome to Capua, and many centuries after that in all-too-recent times millions of fellow humans were carted off to concentration camps and efficiently burned in hell on Earth.

In place of spreading hateful disregard for our fellow humans while atop terra firma, better we be more intent on spreading love, concern and what bits of understanding we can muster. And do so in forsake of unleashing endless streams of vituperative incrimination from mouths willing to feign to be all knowing of the failings of others.

Ted Cruz, regardless of any personal intent attributed to him, has counseled what in good spirit we voting citizen had best take to heart: we each should exercise our own conscience when in November we cast our presidential ballots. For Cruz having issued this advice he has been reviled and reviled again and again by one who has grandly presented himself before his screaming assemblage as God Almighty Trump pretending to be omniscient, omnipotent and fanatically bent on being omnipresent in our lives whether any of us like it or not.

Sam Osborne

West Branch