Letter to the editor:

As the presidential election rapidly approaches, we are becoming increasingly concerned by the support for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. They refuse to admit the proven fact that Trump lost the last election, and they will not commit to peacefully accepting the results of the next election if they lose. Trump recently called his political opponents “sick people, radical left lunatics,” said that “the bigger problem are the people from within,” and suggested that “it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.” These are the words of a potential dictator who will model his presidency on dictators he has openly admired and befriended, like Russia’s Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, China’s Xi Jinping, or Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Now that the Supreme Court has granted the U.S. president immunity in “official acts,” Trump would be free to use his official powers to engage in criminal acts substantially free of accountability if elected President again. Although Trump denies any knowledge of Project 2025, his name is mentioned more than 300 times in the 922-page document, and he said that it “lays the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do” when he addressed the Heritage Foundation which authored it. Project 2025 provides the framework for Trump to replace federal employees with his own political appointees and control elections to organize a fully totalitarian government from within the framework of our own government, as Adolf Hitler did in Germany.

If we support a presidential candidate in spite of willful lying and misconduct, the lies will come back to bite us as the subjugated citizens of a dictatorship. During his Gettysburg address during the Civil War, when our country was even more divided than we are now, Republican President Abraham Lincoln prayed “that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” We strongly urge voters to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, candidates with character and integrity, who will put country ahead of self, defend our Constitution, and work for justice and democracy.

Jane M. Fary and Daniel R. B. Fary, M.D.

Fort Atkinson