Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Here.

To the Editor:

Re “‘See What Happens’ to Clinton if Guards Disarm, Trump Says” (front page, Sept. 17):

Donald Trump’s suggestion to disarm Hillary Clinton’s Secret Service agents, like his comment that “Second Amendment people” could solve the problem of her judiciary appointments, will be discounted by Mr. Trump and his advisers as misunderstandings of his intent.

How many times has he said the people and the press have misunderstood his inflammatory remarks? Taking him at his word on that, is it wise to have a president who is so consistently misunderstood—who almost daily inflames passions without meaning to? Aren’t international relations a little too sensitive for that kind of carelessness?

DENNIS MICHAEL BURKE

Phoenix

Note from KBJ: Progressives (a.k.a. jackasses) put the worst possible spin on everything Donald Trump says. Instead of getting the benefit of the doubt, he gets the detriment of the doubt. What progressives don't realize is that the American people now understand what they're doing. Isn't it obvious what Trump was saying? He was saying that Hillary Clinton is a hypocrite. She wants to take guns away from law-abiding citizens, but insists on having guns all around her to protect her. Let them eat cake!

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) has his own trigger warning. Kant was a man of the enlightenment. He would be appalled.

While walking the streets of Glasgow, Katherine and I happened upon this line of taxis. Notice how small they are. Almost every vehicle we saw in Scotland was small like this. Here in Texas, every other vehicle is a ridiculously large sport-utility vehicle or pickup truck. Click to enlarge.

On some accounts, . . . it might be suggested that the existence of an act of murder makes the world bad above and beyond the badness of the resulting loss of innocent life. On such a view, even if killing the one were the only way to save the two from dying of natural causes, we could not automatically assume that killing the one would result in the greater amount of good overall. For the choice would be between, on the one hand, the badness of two innocent deaths and, on the other hand, the badness of one innocent death plus the additional badness of an act of murder. It would be possible that the contribution that an act of murder makes to the badness of outcomes is so great that murdering the one so as to save the two from dying of natural causes would not actually promote the greater good.

(Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality, Oxford Ethics Series, ed. Derek Parfit [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989], 26 [italics in original; ellipsis added])

Note from KBJ: The view being described by Kagan is deontology, which might be summarized by the slogan, "Better two deaths than one murder." A consequentialist would say, "Better one death than two deaths."

This is Donald Trump's theme song.

Here.

Here.

To the Editor:

Zeynep Tufekci’s Op-Ed article on political rumors, “You Hear the Latest on Hillary?” (Sept. 13), was interesting but did not mention key elements.

First, these rumors are one-sided, nearly always hatched by Republicans against Democrats, and almost exclusively smearing the Clintons and Barack Obama. Behold all the fanciful rumors (Whitewater, Vince Foster’s “murder,” drug-running) during Bill Clinton’s presidency, but a lack of rumors against his rivals, George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole.

Mr. Obama was pelted with irrational rumors (foreign born, Muslim, Communist), yet his opponents, John McCain and Mitt Romney, were not. Now Hillary Clinton is the target of vicious smears (she’s dying, Benghazi, emails) while Democrats use Donald Trump’s own words against him rather than inventing rumors.

Second, these rumors are planted by political operatives on right-wing websites such as Breitbart and WorldNetDaily, get quoted on Fox News and then are “legitimized” when they are picked up by mainstream news organizations.

Like Ms. Tufekci, living overseas gave me perspective on how other societies deal with rumors, but here, cynical manipulation of rumors is so finely tuned as to become an indispensable tool of political propaganda.

JOHN WRIGHT

Seattle

The writer is the author of “The Obama Haters.”

Note from KBJ: Another resident of Cloud Cuckoo Land. Whatever will he do when Donald Trump is elected president?

It may be the second half of September (and three days away from autumn), but it's still scorching hot in North Texas. When I left my house today to ride my bike 34.3 miles, the heat index was 103º. When I returned, almost three hours later, it was 106º. I guess we're being paid back for a milder-than-usual August. I have now pedaled 4,570.6 miles in 2016. I'm well on my way to breaking my record of 6,205.9 miles.