Regarding the Feb. 12 front-page article “Combative Bondi lobs insults under questioning”:
CNN should have warned viewers that watching Attorney General Pam Bondi testify Wednesday carried the same risk as President Donald Trump’s daily ingestion of 325 milligrams of aspirin: intracranial hemorrhaging. Since America’s chief law enforcement officer promptly diagnosed Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) with “Trump derangement syndrome” — for questioning her handling of the Epstein files — I feel free to add “Bondi-induced exploding-head syndrome” to the DSM of Trump-era diagnostic categories.
Bondi offered the following argument to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland): “You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up loser lawyer. You’re not even a lawyer!” As the attorney general was presumably taught at law school: When you can’t argue the facts, argue the law; when you can’t argue either, impugn the character of the witness.
In one respect, Bondi was absolutely correct: Her predecessor Merrick Garland’s glacial incompetence and indifference allowed Ghislaine Maxwell to accept a prison sentence without compelling or inducing her to name names. Garland also could have released the Epstein files, especially after Maxwell’s conviction. Bondi, like Garland, has presided over the abandonment of an untold number of Jeffery Epstein’s victims.
Eric Radack, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Attorney General Pam Bondi had an audience of one, and that was President Donald Trump. She was unresponsive to pointed questions about the Epstein files but came prepared with a list of allegations against the members of Congress who tried to pin her down. Kudos to Jared Moskowitz (D-Florida) for seeing through her shtick and asking for her best shot.
The irony is that callous ad hominem attacks meant to please Trump, as FBI Director Kash Patel and others have employed, don’t help the president politically. Throwing red meat to an ever-decreasing MAGA crowd doesn’t inspire sympathy in the majority of the voting public.
George Magakis Jr., Norristown, Pennsylvania
From Black history to painful present
I share the outrage reported in the Feb. 7 front-page article “Bipartisan fury follows Trump clip of Obamas.”
February is Black History Month. In the hall outside my fourth-grade classroom, I have hung posters of Thurgood Marshall, Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Katherine Johnson, among others. I read “The Story of Ruby Bridges” to my class. A diverse, lively group of 27 fourth-graders listened with real concern. They couldn’t comprehend how an angry mob could hurl racial slurs at a 6-year-old who was just trying to go to school.
I’d like to tell students that this hate is in the past. I’d like to tell them that the United States, like our classroom, embraces diversity. But when our president’s social media account broadcasts a video of Barack and Michelle Obama’s faces superimposed onto the bodies of apes, I cannot tell them that. I can only hope that they will judge our president, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character.
Diane B. Norton, Fairfax
Though some Republicans have condemned the racist social media clip of the Obamas, many are still circling the wagons or remaining mum. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.” Well, character still matters — at least to some of us.
David Berry, Annandale
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I have a confession. There was a time when I supported Donald Trump simply because he carried an “(R)” after his name. I told myself the policies mattered more than the person. But then someone I trusted asked me a question that cut through all my justifications: What about his character?
If “character matters” was our rallying cry during Bill Clinton’s impeachment, then character still matters when the president is someone we prefer politically. It matters when constitutional safeguards — like the foreign emoluments clause — are brushed aside.
This is not about relitigating the past. It is about moral consistency in the present. We cannot claim to follow Jesus and then avert our eyes from behavior that contradicts what he taught. To do so is to gain the world and lose our soul.
Bruce Lampley, Raytown, Missouri
An elusive higher power
In his Feb. 1 Sunday Opinion essay, “I’ve reported on UFO sightings for decades — and come to this conclusion,” Michael Shermer wrote that “aliens are sky gods for skeptics, deities for atheists and a secular alternative to replace the rapidly declining religiosity in the West.” I agree. I’ve felt for a long time that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence was just a search for a missing god.
Even if we find an alien civilization, what will we learn? Stop killing? Stop wars? Conserve your planet? Love one another? Jesus, whom believers consider God, asked for this, as did the Buddha, the Hebrew prophets and others. If we don’t listen to them, why would we listen to aliens from a distant world?
Michael Hoyt, Silver Spring
Close encounters with Buddhist monks
Regarding the Feb. 11 Metro article “Monks arrive in D.C., bringing solace with them”:
We’ve all heard or read stories of miracles performed by gods. One story tells of a god parting a sea. In another, a god lifted an entire mountain on his little finger. More than one story has a god ascending bodily into the air before disappearing forever from Earth. And one god, we’re told, walked on water.
Today, with our own eyes, we are witnessing a miracle that no all-powerful god has ever accomplished: self-disciplined monks walking into D.C. 108 days and 2,300 miles after leaving Fort Worth. In mindfully living and walking in peace every day, the only prize they seek is to end human suffering.
Reggie Regrut, Phillipsburg, New Jersey
Mindfulness, stripped of mysticism, is disciplined awareness of how we think. Whether one approaches mindfulness spiritually or scientifically, the proposition that healthier minds contribute to healthier societies is not fringe; it is foundational.
At a time when violence — international and domestic — seems increasingly normalized, the psychological roots of conflict deserve serious attention. Wars begin long before the first shot is fired. They begin in the mind: in distorted concepts, in ambiguous language, in narratives that frame domination as security and dehumanization as necessity.
Descartes wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” The human mind’s creativity is remarkable, including its ability to rationalize mass violence with chilling sophistication. That dual capacity may be our greatest vulnerability. Descartes might now say, “I think, therefore I am … probably wrong. Where can I get a fact check?”
At minimum, the Buddhist monks’ winter walk for peace invites a conversation about whether the prevention of violence begins not only in treaties and arsenals but also in the architecture of thought itself.
Chuck Woolery, Rockville
Following the Feb. 1 letters package “Flirting is trickier than ever. Here’s how to approach it.,” Post Opinions wants to know: How soon do you bring up politics when getting to know someone? Is a first date too soon? Share your response, and it might be published as a letter to the editor. wapo.st/discuss_politics
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