Chuck Kopp’s commentary piece, “The Monday Night Football awakening,” (ADN, Jan. 5) started well, asking us to treat those with other political views with compassion and understanding, not hatred, and to prioritize common ground and flexibility. Referencing the current dysfunction in the House failing to elect a speaker, he mentioned Abraham Lincoln’s prediction (not an exact quote) that if our country should perish, it will perish by suicide and faction, not by foreign forces.
But then Kopp wrote that given our national motto “In God We Trust,” we should trust God rather than political parties. Different people interpret God in different ways. Some of the Republicans in the House are QAnon followers, Christian nationalists who believe (without evidence) that Democrats are cannibalistic pedophiles.
In Lincoln’s time, and up until 1956 and the Red Scare, our national motto was E Pluribus Unum. Church and state must continue to be kept separate, for us to survive as a democracy. Yes, let us treat each other with compassion and understanding (although understanding QAnon is a stretch for me), and find common ground, but just as important, let our politics be rational.
— Gail Heineman
Anchorage
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