LETTER: Will children understand that vicious name calling is wrong?

To Ozaukee Press:

Did we forget the basics of right and wrong? Stuff like name calling when you were a kid? And you’d “get in trouble” if you got caught name calling. You had to apologize, make it right, because derogatory name calling is just the wrong thing to do.

If children watch a man acting as president of the U.S. calling people he doesn’t like derogatory names on TV, it must not really be wrong, right? For 8-year-olds, Donald Trump has normalized and dulled something inside of us that we all intuitively know is wrong.

Imagine a second grader hearing the president referring to someone he’s mad at as stupid, disgusting, a rabid animal, a loser, a rapist, a murderer, deranged, using abusive vulgar language towards women and then imitating a person who is physically disabled. Do we know deep inside it’s just plain wrong?

Trump knows, as every 4-year-old knows, that repeatedly attaching one derogatory, demeaning adjective to a person makes it stick.

I’ve paid attention to the after effects on the people who have endured Trump’s attacks. He goes after someone out loud and throws them into media-junk nationally.

So this Trump guy wants to be our president again. And if he doesn’t like you, he will continue to cut a devastating swath of brutal ugliness over you like he has over all the others until it takes you out. And it sticks and destroys.

Do our kids know this is a wrong thing to do? Do we believe as rational human beings (political differences aside) that this is right or wrong?

Marian Baud

Port Washington