The ‘exploding salami’ argument. Hurdled Subway sandwich is ‘so’ deep state | Letters

Exploding salami

Talk about clutching your pearls! An angry Department of Justice employee rants at the new occupying force in D.C. outside a Subway shop and gets fired and prosecuted for assault with a sandwich.

And Attorney General Pam Bondi says it’s an example of the Deep State?! “New! D.C. special!

Deep state sub sandwiches!”

Yeah, yeah, throwing anything, even a feather, at an officer (or anyone) constitutes assault, because there could be anthrax or exploding salami in that sandwich. Still! If THIS is the Deep State, what’s a Shallow Hysterical one look like?

If we don’t protest effectively enough, this is what we all have to look forward to.

Ordinary officers made to become part of a Gestapo turned against any of us who show our frustration, even if by just hurling our lunch.

Samantha Willow, Westerville

Our fading freedoms

Where is the party of small government? The Trump Party is big government on steroids.

Instead of free enterprise, President Donald Trump intervenes in commerce with tariffs. Businesses dependent on imports are the losers.

The Justice Department has been weaponized to attack political opponents.

Major institutions are under threat if they do not conform to Trump’s ideology.

These include universities and the Smithsonian museums.

Trump has taken personal control of the Kennedy Center in Washington, and now the big federal government has taken over the D.C. police.

Trump’s power is growing; our freedoms are fading.

Robert Tannehill, Delaware

The charismatic puppet

I carry around a protest sign that reads, “I AM HERE to PROTECT my GRANDCHILDREN from FASCISM,” but I don’t think our president knows what the word fascism means.

I had an interesting experience when I was sitting by myself near the White House with my sign.

A woman walked by and said to me, “Trump is keeping us all safe.”

I hadn’t used the word “Trump” on my sign. She made the inference herself. I think she just saw it as a pejorative and assumed that I was talking merely about President Donald Trump.

Fascism did not die with Benito Mussolini. He had allied with Germany, and the affinity between fascists and Nazis carried authoritarian atrocities forward.

Our representative form of government was established with three independent branches, Executive, Legislative and Judicial, for a reason. The executive branch, with Trump as its cultish figurehead, has garnered way too much power.

This administration has people smarter than Trump to carry forward its mission of control. If they can manipulate elections by picking their voters, making it difficult for other voters to have their voices counted, and disillusion so many of our citizens such that they don’t vote, we are in trouble.

I don’t absolve the Democratic Party for our disillusionment, either.

However, we are at risk of losing our democracy to the current agenda of unitary control and absolutist ideals. Be it a single dictator or a single branch of government guided by a charismatic puppet, that is fascism.

Ann Corley Silverman, Columbus

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: The ‘exploding salami’ argument. Hurdled Subway sandwich is ‘so’ deep state | Letters