Opinion: Donald Trump voters are hoping for Christmas in July

To the editor: Christmas in July: This metaphor stirs me on reading Peter Manseau’s analysis of the quasi-religious movement that is presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign. (Re “The Church of Trump,” Opinion, June 21.)

Manseau writes: “Perhaps the most surprising of all is that Trump voters are motivated by a kind of faith: They believe in the man, and in his promise that all their losing will come to an end.”

The Republican Party is in a Christmas season; children vote to tell what gifts they want, not to worry about how they get them. Christmas morning comes, and billionaire Santa has scattered unwrapped presents for the whole family under the brightly decorated tree.

Wake up, children. It’s time to grow up.

Aimee Elsbree, Claremont

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To the editor: What Manseau seems clueless about is that in describing Trump’s “messianic” vocabulary, he could just as easily be describing the vocabulary of progressives. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren come immediately to mind, and so does likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

As Vin Scully noted recently, in Hugo Chavez’s failed Venezuelan socialist “utopia,” the richest person is Chavez’s daughter. That it could not happen here is laughable.

Kip Dellinger, Santa Monica

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To the editor: It’s funny to see Manseau’s characterization of Trumpism as a religion (something that rings true) just days after the radicalization of someone’s otherwise innocuous beliefs cost the LGBTQ community 49 lives and decades of healing.

What is at the center of both that single act and a year of Trumpism? Dogmatic beliefs and the cold, costly drive of unquestioned fear: Fear of the other and fear of the unfamiliar neighbor. And ironically but predictably, it is that same thing that both caused a man to turn to an archaic and inaccurate strain of Islam and turned a prominent American businessman into a crusader against our Muslim neighbors.

This is not going to go away. Until we both check our fear of the other as a society and begin questioning what we otherwise accept unthinkingly and uncritically, the confluence of the two things will lead to death and legalized discrimination.

Chris Machold, Irvine

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