Rare times with Trump

Having read the Nov. 3 “The choice is clear” editorial, I do hope readers visit goo.gl/7W90VD.

These are rare times.  My personal introduction to the world stage came when I watched the murder of Israeli Olympians in 1972 on live TV at the age of 9. I grew up in a family which espoused multi-level involvement for the betterment of mankind.

This continued during my time at UA, when I served as Chief Justice of the UA Student Superior Court, as a local youth director, an assistant scoutmaster, and as Area Coordinator for the Mennonite Board of Missions.

Never in modern history has someone with no experience at governing ever assumed the presidency. We are witnesses to the proliferation of confirmation bias; anchoring; overconfidence bias in fake or exaggerated news; availability cascade; continued influence effect; hyperbolic discounting; illusory truth effect; reactive devaluation; and more.

If Trump assumes the presidency, I believe we will experience federal corruption at a level not seen since the presidency of Richard Nixon. It is not the possibility of corruption that bothers me, it is the gross incivility and sociopathic behavior that Trump demonstrated over such a length of time as to make it socially normal.

Suppose I bully someone today at work within one of the stated civil rights and this persists over a length of time. A lawsuit may subsequently be filed by the afflicted person. A defense could be presented that because President Trump did exactly the same thing, this then becomes a “legitimate” norm.

Raymond Herbst

The author is an alumnus of UA.