By majority vote, the Utah Legislature has endorsed Donald Trump, claiming, among other things, that he best represents “Utah values.” Every woman who has ever lived here is surely rolling over in her grave!
And a few men who know the difference between a moral compass and a swastika are joining them.
Utah values? Since when do our “values” embrace a presidential candidate convicted of sexual assault and business fraud? Do we include in those we admire someone who blatantly brags about his sexual conquests? Someone who echoes Adolf Hitler in claiming immigrants are “poisoning our blood”? Or who invites the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to “do whatever the hell he wants” to our NATO allies? Utah values?
These certainly weren’t the values I learned in Sunday school.
What about encouraging an attack on our Capitol, bringing death and injury to those protecting the building’s sacred halls? Utah values? I’m ashamed if that is true.
The fact is, putting Trump back in the White House will be like allowing the wicked, foolish emperor back on the throne after he has been once deposed. Full of fire and vengeance, he will wreak havoc on the weak and marginalized and be applauded for it. Perhaps we people of Utah should remember that once we were a persecuted minority too. Once our ancestors stood on a riverbank, having been forced from their homes, looking westward for their Zion, and to their Lord who said, “I was a stranger and ye took me in,” and “honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently.”
Utah values? To claim that Trump reflects our values is a joke. But I’m not laughing. Instead, I’m weeping. “When the wicked rule, the people mourn.” I am one of those people.
Lynne Larson, American Fork
