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

Here's the thing I love most about this. The people who are likely to read and be influenced by the essay are precisely the people we don't want reproducing! Thank you, David Benatar, for performing this useful service.

George Neumayr nails it.

Here's how it works in 2017:

1. You criticized me.

2. I'm black.

Therefore,

3. You criticized me because I'm black.

4. Criticizing someone because he or she is black is racism.

Therefore,

5. You're a racist.

Got it?

America likes to think of itself in superlatives, but 2017 has seen those assumed tributes turn ruinous. Instead of the “greatest and the best,” we’ve had the most destructive hurricanes to Texas, Florida and Caribbean territories that are part of the U.S.; the biggest mass shooting in the nation’s history, and the worst California wildfires ever. Adding extreme insult to injury, we also have the most dangerous president in the nation’s history—impulsive, impetuous, bigoted, narcissistic, unschooled in history and diplomacy, and eager to make perilous nuclear threats to the equally unstable North Korean regime. Where will it end?

Ruth Bailey, Lafayette

The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2017

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Here is Kurt Schlichter's latest column.

Led Zeppelin II (1969). Jimmy Page on guitar.

Here.

Here.

To the editor:

That longtime respected conservatives like Max Boot, George Will, Charles Krauthammer and others have a sense of judgment, character and integrity and are able to determine that President Trump’s vindictiveness and inflammatory rhetoric are dangerous to our country is refreshing. (“Trump’s ‘I alone’ approach jeopardizes U.S. security and prosperity,” Opinion, Oct. 18)

Hopefully, the United States will once again be a country that understands what democracy is and what is required to help it work, including finding the common ground on which we function.

When he resigned from the Republican Party during the 2016 campaign, Will said Trump’s nomination for president would herald the end of his former party. With Trump now serving as president, it appears the destruction of our nation as we knew it is a possibility.

Jim Matlock, Ventura