Make no mistake, this administration is doing damage

Andrew J. Bacevich’s July 18 op-ed, “Curb the paranoia, anti-Trumpers,’’ contains many valid points; however, at its core it is fundamentally wrong. The notion that “nothing much has changed’’ under Donald Trump, because some crises have not really amounted to much, is misleading.

Under the radar, the Trump administration is quietly dismantling many of our environmental protections. Just a few examples include revoking the Stream Protection Rule (which will enable mining waste to be dumped in our waterways); moving to rescind the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan (allowing coal leases on federal lands and dismantling protections against carbon emissions); and rejecting the ban of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which may be associated with brain damage in children and farm workers.

The environment is not the only thing being undermined by Trump. His steady stream of lies undermines the presidency and the “moral landscape’’ of our country. It poisons the rest or our leaders by making politicians complicit in the lies by not confronting them. It sends a terrible message to our children. Its corrosiveness even creeps into well-meaning opinion pieces such as Bacevich’s, which ignore Trump’s lies because they have become normalized.

This is not paranoia; it is decay.

Andrew Goldstein

Concord

There’s perverse comfort to be found in the ‘buffoon’ theory

I found perverse comfort in Andrew J. Bacevich’s admonition to anti-Trumpers like myself. You mean it’s possible that Donald Trump’s inexplicable deference to Russia simply means that he is a “clownishly incompetent and willfully ignorant buffoon,’’ and not a president who has sold out his country in exchange for financial help in propping up his failing empire and subverting the will of the voters? Please, God, make it so!

Anne Comber

Milton

Put the president on the couch

Why do we continue to be surprised by President Trump’s behavior? As a narcissist on steroids, he is simply psychologically incapable of putting his country first. It’s always about him and his needs, and it always will be. We can analyze the politics of the situation to death, but politics can’t cure a medical problem. Let’s scrap the “Goldwater rule.’’

Louise Lintz

Milton