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Trump’s latest tweets: Anything less than outrage is complicity

Trump is making hate speech a communication norm

While relaxing with friends in America’s heartland — beautiful Kansas City, Mo. — I read the most recent ugly tweets from the president. I don’t care about his fear or rage. Vigorous political dialogue ceases to exist when hate speech becomes a communication norm, and it has. We cannot shy away from calling out twisted lies, racism, or misogyny embedded in it. For the sake of democracy — never mind common decency — I call on all Americans and our elected representatives to transcend political persuasion and condemn the president’s despicable tweets. If we decide to shrug it off, we reveal that we are complicit.

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Kathleen Molloy Nollet

Littleton

The ‘Go back’ line stings, just as it did for him 70 years ago

While growing up in a “nice” neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., I would occasionally hear someone say to my mother, whose French accent was as strong as the day she arrived on these shores, “Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” I would be offended more than she appeared to be, and would wonder whether there was something wrong with my mother (and for that I’m ashamed). I’m astounded, like most of the decent people I know, that this country’s so-called president has the same sort of mentality, more than 70 years later, as those one or two close-minded neighbors. Such regression is unacceptable, and I appreciated the Globe’s coverage of the furor over Donald Trump’s recent tweets, and this quote from Representative Ayanna Pressley: “This is just another example and demonstration of the bigotry, the xenophobia, the hatred of this administration.”

Michel L. Spitzer

Jamaica Plain