I get that there are many people in our country who feel strongly that the U.S. has changed for the worse in the last generation. I understand how they might feel left behind, ignored, even victimized, while at the same time it seems we have bent over backward to help others, especially immigrants, people of color and those who are gay or transgender. And I see how these strongly felt perceptions have shaped the MAGA movement.

But I would ask of those who share these views, would they really want to trade places with a new immigrant to our country? People who have left everything behind, due to poverty, oppression or violence, seeking a new start for their family in a strange, unwelcoming land. Or someone of color, who has faced prejudice and discrimination their entire life? Or folks who have grown up unable to fit with their prescribed sexual or gender identity, struggling to find acceptance for who they feel they truly are in a world that isn’t accepting of them? Probably not.

Perhaps rather than accepting the MAGA rhetoric, which demonizes those groups, and pits us against each other in very destructive ways, we might instead try to work together, as Americans, to find ways to make the world work better for all of us. That is, after all, the American ideal.

Doug Zlatin
Falmouth