OPINION: Talk of the Town: What will be will be in this new year, unless ...

Jan. 2—Not a Trump fan, but planning to vote for him

Should he be the nominee in 2024, Donald Trump will be getting my vote.

I am an independent voter. I was not going to vote for Trump, though I have in the past, but seeing the way the Democratic Party, the judges and the media are treating him, he will get my vote.

Democrats seem to think that they cannot win any election on the fair and square. No, I do not think the election was stolen in 2020, but Democrats, their gang of liberal judges and a liberal media mock our Constitution and the American affinity for a fair game. ...

Since Uncle Joe took office, and shut down half of American energy production, gas prices skyrocketed. Our foreign policy is in a shambles. Our border is an open door for drug dealers and human trafficking. Our enemies taunt us, our allies no longer trust us.

I am not a big fan of Trump as a person. He can be mean, but Uncle Joe has matched Trump for meanness point for point. I am not a big fan of Trump but I am a fan of a strong nation, a working border, and energy independence. And honesty and fairness.

ALFRED PUGLISI

Rio Rancho

America too busy minding everyone else's business

John Leacock asks if we are moving into a new era of history (Dec. 23). His view it would seem from the conclusion is that we are destined to get more of the same. My response is that if we keep doing what we have been doing, we are going to keep getting what we have been getting. So what are we doing and what might change?

The Watson Institute at Brown University states "From 2021 to 2023, the U.S. government undertook what it labeled 'counterterrorism' activities in 78 countries, in an outgrowth of President George W. Bush's 'Global War on Terror.'" Before that was Iraq and Afghanistan and before that Vietnam. So that pretty well explains what we have been doing — minding the world's business. And it's been expensive.

Again from the Watson Institute: "Pentagon spending has totaled over $14 trillion since the start of the war in Afghanistan, with one-third to one-half of the total going to military contractors." That amount is 41% of the current U.S. national debt. That's a huge investment. Has it been worth it?

From 1942 to about 1964 the U.S. led the world in innovation. WWII put Americans to work and the GI Bill at the end of the war provided virtually free education to a generation of Americans, which fed the innovation started in the U.S. during the war. We were investing about 2% of our GDP into innovation. Since then, there has been a steady decline to about 0.7% now. Investing in ourselves would bring the economic status of all Americans up.

Meanwhile other nations, including Singapore and China and many other nations, have read our playbook and are getting stronger. China has raised 90 million people out of poverty. Singapore is what might be considered a modern miracle, going from illiterate to the ninth richest on Earth since being thrown out of the British Commonwealth in 1958. Singapore has no resources; they have only themselves. Singapore invested in education. Their $2 bill, the most circulated, shows students in a classroom listening to a professor with a university in the background. Underneath there is just one word: Education.

Focused first on the evils of communism and then moving on to other perceived evils in the world we have taken our eye off the goal — America — and decided to mind everyone else's business by taking on the perceived evils of the world. Is there another path forward?

The U.N. Charter, adopted in 1945, is explicit that affairs internal to nations are not to be meddled with by other nations and that when there is an international controversy that controversy is to be taken to the U.N. for discussion.

We have been pretty much ignoring this since its adoption. What if the U.S. took the issues with the 78 countries we are militarily engaged with to the U.N.?

MICHAEL DALY

Gallup