To the editor: First, congratulations to Ketanji Brown Jackson for confirmation of her nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States of America and to the President, the Congress and the country that together made it happen.
Second, in the New York Times Book Review on “Insurgency” by Jeremy W. Peters, reviewer Romesh Ratnesar analyzes how and why Donald Trump took over the Republican Party. At one point, he quotes this description of Trump by Peters: “Devoid of empathy, incapable of humility, and unfamiliar with what it means to suffer consequences, he behaved in ways most would never dare.”
On the opposite page in the NYT Book Review is a review of a recent novel by Aamina Ahmad. The reviewer, Omar El Akkad, ends with this comment: “The powerful might often escape consequences, Ahmad shows, but life without these is its own kind of poverty, its own miserable inheritance.” The convergence of these two sentences sums up Trump’s core and his immediate and long-range danger for our democracy.
Perhaps a first step in reversing the likelihood of such a “miserable inheritance” is each of us accepting both individual and collective responsibility for consequences. Then, perhaps we can understand them and approaching them as shared opportunities to support each other and learn grow together.
Bob Gardiner, Lenox
