Sounding off: What if Trump had never been born?

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a Christmas movie I enjoy every year. How all our lives are intertwined. This year as I watched, I thought … if only. If Donald Trump had never been born; therefore never president.

Let’s say the presidential winner in 2016 was either Hillary Clinton or John Kasich. I believe it’s safe to say this country would be vastly different. Vaccines would be considered lifesaving from the start by either hypothetical president. No pushing insane covid concoctions.

The constant lies would never have happened. Eliminating the misinformation may have changed attitudes. No burning of masks or attacks on school boards. Instead, working together is what patriotic Americans have always done until now.

As in the movie, one person’s life changed indifference to compassion, selfishness to kindness and disrespect to civility, I sense either of these candidates, one Democrat or one Republican, would have been decisive leaders, not insane egotists. What a difference that would make. Bringing people together with thoughtful conversation.

Staying with the storyline of Trump not being born, Americans would have heard the truth in early 2020. Some say an increase in vaccinations could have cut the death toll to less than half in 2020, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

For sure, neither candidate would have dreamed up the Big Lie. Therefore, the attempted coup by anti-American insurrectionists beating police and desecrating the Capitol would never have happened.

What a difference — if only …

Frank Flori, Hempfield

Omicron? We all saw it coming

“Nobody saw it coming.” That was President Biden’s response when asked about the omicron covid-19 surge. “Who saw it coming?” he asked, staring incredulously. Well, Joe, you did. Your administration did.

We’ve heard it for years now: If left unchecked, the virus will mutate, creating variants that could be more transmissible and/or more deadly, and that our current vaccines may not protect as well against. This isn’t in-the-know, jargon-laden scientific community discourse. This is cable television. Dr. Anthony Fauci has discussed it ad nauseam, as have the host of doctors we see discussing covid daily. And Biden asks, “Who saw it coming?”

We can’t continue to fall back on the rhetoric of “Who saw it coming?” When there’s a school shooting, no thoughtful person can ask that; there were more than 100 school shootings in the U.S. last year. A wildfire just swept through the Denver area. Was anyone surprised? They shouldn’t be. They happen all the time now.

We need to stop shrugging our shoulders every time something horrible happens. These things aren’t unthinkable — they’re very thinkable. We all saw it coming. The question the president should be asking is, “What am I going to do about it?”

Conor Demers, Penn Hills

Heed words of religious leaders on vaccines

To those who cite religious objections to vaccination for covid, I suggest that they consider the words of two well-known religious leaders, Martin Luther and Pope Francis.

“It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it gainst the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have. He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor’s death and is a murderer many times over.” (Martin Luther’s Works, Vol. 43)

In a video message produced in conjunction with the Ad Council, Pope Francis praised the work of researchers and scientists in producing safe and effective covid-19 vaccines: “Thanks to God’s grace and to the work of many, we now have vaccines to protect us from covid-19.”

He added that vaccines “bring hope to end the pandemic, but only if they are available to all and if we collaborate with one another.”

Charles Henry, Greensburg

Leaders must figure out climate solutions now

In the Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up,” politicians chasing dollar signs tell voters to think about “jobs” and ignore all the evidence suggesting impending disaster because of their corporate-friendly decision-making. Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald tells us to not look up at the county’s nation-leading toxic air quality and lung disease rates while referring to clean air advocates as “extremists.”

When will Fitzgerald be honest with us that the climate emergency is accelerating, we’re seeing the signs globally including yet another abnormally warm December in Pittsburgh and that there are no jobs for anyone if human civilization cannot survive?

There need not be conflict between jobs and the planet; the real, original Green New Deal, part of the Green Party’s national platform since 2012, can make millions of good-paying, unionized green jobs, far more and better jobs than oil, gas and petrochemicals can ever promise and without the toxic, unhealthy, planet-destroying pollution, too. We can have an economy that works for us, not corporations, that takes care of every worker and family.

Our future lies with a decarbonized green economy; Fitzgerald, Democrats and Republicans need to figure this out before it is too late to stop a global catastrophe.

Garret Wassermann, Coraopolis

The writer is a national steering committee co-chair of the Green Party of the United States.

Republicans’ plans

In her letter, “Republicans are not planning for our well-being,” Patty Satalia said, “The Republican Party has no plan.” The Republicans have a commonsense plan. It is to:

• Patrol the border, build a wall and keep asylum-seekers in Mexico, not let in over 1.5 million illegal immigrants.

• Combat the pandemic with vaccines and treatments, not disperse thousands of untested and unvaccinated people throughout the U.S.

• Provide testing, not say we need more testing, do nothing and then say no one saw the need for more testing.

• Support police funding, not “defund the police” when crime is rising.

• Withdraw from Afghanistan in 2021, not select an arbitrary withdrawal date, and then withdraw, leaving hundreds of people and billions of dollars of equipment to the enemy.

• Continue domestic oil production, not reduce future production and ask other countries to increase their production and buy oil from them.

• Utilize electric vehicles as they become viable, not promote EVs with tax credits to make them appear viable.

• Let private industry build and install charging stations, not use tax dollars, and place stations in low-income areas where there are few electric cars.

• Increase natural gas production and encourage converting trucks and buses to natural gas, not reduce natural gas production.

• Encourage finding technical and innovative solutions to problems, not throw money at every problem causing inflation, increasing debt and taxes.

• Don’t lie and say legislation will not negatively impact low- and middle-income families, and only the “rich” will pay for it.

Do we really want any more Biden plans?

Tom Cerra, Latrobe

Decade of despair ahead for Steelers

Tim Benz wrote about life after Big Ben (“Appreciating Ben Roethlisberger’s career, and grasping the massive task of replacing him.”) But he and the rest of the local media don’t know the half of it yet. Because now the team faces a unique situation they never have before: They are trapped in a division with Joe Burrow, who will soon be the best quarterback in football. It will be like having Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers in our division for the next decade.

The Steelers are staring at a decade of despair and endless beatdowns. And soon Benz and everyone else will know because they will have to live it.

Randy Oliver, Dawson

Democracy is being threatened

Thomas Wagner writes a curious letter (“Baseless claims.”) I found his syntax rather confusing, but he seems to be complaining that election fraud is not adequately being illuminated in the media. And yet his letter was only two sentences — he had plenty of space to be specific about this alleged fraud. I wonder why he didn’t use his platform to provide details. Maybe because he has none?

Letter-writer Bob Jacobs (“If election system works, audit should be supported,”) lists the usual right-wing sophistry, but it was all thrown out of court for lack of evidence over 60 times, often by Trump-appointed judges.

The real fraud is the Big Lie and that the Republicans desperately tried to steal the 2020 election with the help of megaphones like OEM and Fox “News.” As we speak, they are passing laws in Republican states to outright steal the next election.

Republican policies lean heavily toward the rich, and most people want legal abortion, gun control and socialized medicine. They can’t win a fair election, as shown by the fact that they lost the popular vote in the last seven presidential elections. Democrats don’t need to cheat to win.

Wake up, folks. Our democracy is being threatened, and the stage is being set for another Trump presidency, after which we will live in a dictatorship. Dictatorships are bad news in commerce and in politics. In a two-party system there is competition to please the people. A dictator has no reason to care about anybody but himself. Sound like Trump?

Fred Durig, Delmont