Opinions flare over former President Trump’s game day visit to Williams-Brice Stadium | Opinion
Keep politics off field
Both USC and Clemson are responsible for educating young adults for the future, but our governor parades Trump out on the football field – a man who says there were airports in the Revolutionary War, stealth jets cannot be seen when you are standing next to them, windmill noise causes cancer and the windmills on the South Carolina coast are killing whales, ultraviolet light and bleach cure COVID, and Puerto Rico is an island with “big water” around it.
Our universities admit students of all races, genders and religious beliefs, but this man degrades and name calls anyone who doesn’t agree with him from a military general to a handicapped person.
Are you saying to the business majors that it is okay to commit tax fraud and have numerous bankruptcies with unpaid workers and companies?
Trump is not an example of a man who should be paraded in front of our college students at a football game.
I did not come to the game to support the Gamecocks and have this man disrupt my enjoyment of the bands performing at halftime.
Politics do not belong at a football game.
Pamela Powell, Little River
Field walk insulting
Note: The writer is a 1981 graduate of USC now living in Texas.
I have always been proud to be a Gamecock, but allowing a man who has been indicted on 91 counts, accused of sexual assault by dozens of women and ordered to pay $5 million for rape and defamation brought shame upon our university.
It’s a slap in the face, especially to USC ‘s female students, staff and alumna.
Let me be clear: Trump’s attendance wasn’t the problem.
USC insulted a huge portion of its fan base by letting Trump walk onto the field.
I hope Republican donors can fill the gap left by Democrats who, like me, are for the first time ashamed to be Gamecocks.
Ronda Templeton, San Antonio
Searching for truth
If anyone is still wondering why readership of The State has plummeted over recent years, they need only read Issac Bailey’s editorial “Trump shows weakness as he sullies the South Carolina-Clemson football game.”
Following a preachy, morally condescending harangue against all-things Trump, the article provides what appears to be a succinct summary of what the owners of The State newspaper think of the people of South Carolina.
Apparently, if South Carolina voters do not reject Trump, McMaster and Graham, they are not among “…those of us with eyes, and a functioning brain…”, [who] “…know the truth….”
Blind and brainless, readers search for the truth.
Just not in The State.
Walter Rolandi, Columbia
Protect your rights
Almost every day, it seems there’s more and more evidence that our federal, state and local governments are curtailing our voting rights, banning books and generally denying or reducing our rights, freedoms and liberties.
I am worried that our country is coming more and more under the influence and control of those whose words and actions indicate they’d turn our democracy into a dictatorial institution, one where civil rights are denied, where injustice is tolerated, if not encouraged, where science is denied, where falsehoods are taken as fact.
Some may even believe these changes are necessary and appropriate, as they match their own beliefs on those subjects, but what will happen when your right to something you believe in is taken from you?
Have we forgotten all the lives lost in the past to protect democracy?
Have we become so intent in our drive for “the “good life” that we don’t – or won’t – take the time to see what’s happening to our freedoms and rights, to appreciate that, if we don’t fight to stop the steady, growing encroachment on them now, we will lose them all?
It has been said: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
So please, do something to protect your rights. Speak up. Donate to an organization that supports free speech.
I am afraid to think about what our future will be like if our democracy falls victim to those who would destroy it, even as they claim to be protecting us.
Dr. James T. Botwick, HHI
