http://ulstermanbooks.com/d-w-ulstermans-open-letter-to-donald-trump/Mr. Trump, I love America and it appears you do as well.
The question that remains is if that love can also represent the kind of leadership that will benefit all who call this wonderful nation their home.
Are you that leader, Mr. Trump?
As I sit here writing this letter I look out upon an America that is but a shadow of its former self.
The real unemployment rate is said to be well into the double-digits. Work participation is at its lowest rate in over forty years as tens of millions have simply given up trying to find a job and so in essence, they have given up entirely.
The world looks at us as a weakened thing unworthy of respect. The terrorist threat grows even as so many of our elected officials refuse to even utter the word terrorism.
Our veterans, despite repeated promises by the very nation they served, cannot even be consistently afforded basic medical care in a timely manner. Some of those veterans are left waiting, and then dying, as that care never arrives.
In just the last month nearly a half TRILLION dollars was added to our national debt. Over the last seven years we have created more debt than all the previous presidential administrations COMBINED. It is the economic version of a drug addict crawling on all fours in a darkened alley, happily pouncing upon a needle and a spoon and then injecting the poison they know is killing them, except in the case of our debt that poison is being given to future generations.
National leaders happily divide one group of Americans against the other along lines of race, religion, and socio-economic standing, thus tearing at the very fabric that once bound us together as the single most powerful force for good in the world.
This is not America.
No, it is something else, a weakened remnant perhaps, a terrible repudiation of former promise and potential.
You promise to make America great again. I am certain it is no accident you chose the very phrase Ronald Reagan used for his own 1980 presidential campaign. Like today, this country faced a crisis of faith in 1980 – faith in itself. President Reagan, through sheer force of will, demanded that faith be returned and remarkably, it did.
Mr. Trump, we knew Ronald Reagan. He was our president and America was better for it. What we don’t now know is if you truly have it in you to be the same.
I want to believe it possible, not so much for myself but for my children and the children and grandchildren of others who like me, worry over a future that would see this country diminished beyond the point of recognition. Too often you waste time on the negligible. Too often you attack those below you when you should be pulling us all collectively upward. I like the fight in you, I like the swagger, but I also worry those things might also come at the expense of principled leadership.
You are among a cadre of honorable candidates. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson…they each represent stories of American promise just as you do and I will happily vote for any of them in the coming election should they be the Republican nominee. Don’t demean yourself by constantly seeking to demean them.
We have seen your toughness. Now we hope to see your greatness because that is what this nation truly needs.
Just as America teetered on the brink in 1980 and then found itself immeasurably blessed with the right man at the right time, we are looking for the same in 2016, for the stakes may be even higher, the risks more dire, than they were all those years ago.
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
Mr. Trump, I pray you can help to make it so.
-DWU
