Catherine Hoffman’s letter encourages Harris supporters to look outside of our echo chamber. Great. I have been involved in political conversations in deeply divided societies for 40 years (if you think America is polarized now, try apartheid South Africa in the 1980s!). I have learned a lot from others. I entered public office in 1995 with a firm set of ideas and watched them evolve over time the more I understood the political-socio-economic realties of others. So in terms of learning from others, I’m all in! In fact, I have been begging MAGA to explain their various significant positions to me … to take their time … if you need an hour, take an hour, if you need five, take five. In most cases, there is no response, a deafening silence (like when I would ask people to explain why black people were less human, less valuable than white people). When responses are given, they are incoherent arguments based on unsubstantiated assertions that are invariably conceded in the discussion. By illustration, let’s take the example given by Ms. Hoffman that Biden is spending “FEMA funds on illegals rather than those funds available for taxpaying American Citizens. And now there is not enough money left for the upcoming hurricane season.”OK, it’s slightly unclear and ambiguous, but let’s respond to what I think she’s saying.Firstly, Congress authorizes FEMA funding by individual programs (Speaker Johnson trying to debunk Trump on Fox News: “There are different programs that have different funding”). So, spending money on one program doesn’t deplete funds or budget available for other programs.Secondly FEMA has no funding for programs for “illegals.” It has funding for migrants, but not “illegals.”Thirdly, Congress has the power of the purse and authorizes budgets. Biden sought additional FEMA funding last October, but Congress ignored the request. Earlier this month, Speaker Johnson was urged to immediately reconvene the chamber, “so that it can pass robust disaster relief spending.” Johnson has said that he does not plan to reconvene the House before the election to address disaster funding.So, escaping my echo chamber is impossible. Ms. Hoffman seems wrong on every single aspect of her “latest horrific example in incompetence.” Ms. Hoffman also maintains that American weaponry left in Afghanistan was used in the Oct. 7 attacks. The IDF presentation on Nov. 16, 2023, showcasing weapons used makes no suggestion that American weapons were used.I do not know what to do with this. I cannot learn from an unsubstantiated assertion of “truth.”Making a broader point, Ms. Hoffman goes on to make “competence” the basis for her support for Trump. But competence in what area? Business? Running a university? Running a foundation? Understanding Christian theology or the Bible? Personal health? Intimate interpersonal relationships? Navigating criminal justice? Seriously, pick any one to defend in objective terms, and I’ll be there.To be fair, perhaps Ms. Hoffman is referring to demonstrated governmental competence like job growth (zero), federal debt (plus $7.8 trillion), policy achievements (no promised infrastructure bill or health care bill, which has been “two weeks away” since 2016), pandemic management, etc. I concede that competence may be difficult to assess from afar, but then consider that of the 42 people who served in Trump’s own Cabinet, nearly half of them haven’t endorsed his 2024 candidacy. There’s no precedent for this. Ms. Hoffman simply cannot assert something which is refuted by those with superior knowledge and experience.Let me strenuously press my point with a specific question. Please, can any MAGA folk explain why Trump’s own political advisers, White House handlers and medical team required him to sit for a dementia test when he was president? Why? I remember sitting in Africa and hearing him boast that he should have the nuclear codes because he could look at some pictures and correctly identify an elephant, something all 6-year-olds in Africa can do! And Trump appears to be deteriorating rapidly. At a rally on 14 October, Trump played music and danced on stage like an Ibizan DJ who had just taken his third ecstasy tablet … for 40 minutes! Folks, this is not normal. Something is very, very, very wrong.Our current political discussions should be laser focused on the domestic and geo-political challenges America faces. Instead we debate whether immigrants are eating Labradors. There is no free market democracy in the world that would tolerate this discourse. Trump is making America dumber. I am often wrong, so I am legitimately ready to listen. However, I cannot accept something as truth simply on the basis that Trump said it is so … for then I will have to leave my echo chamber to join a cult.And that’s not a step forward.Frans Bicker CaartenPark CityThe post Of echo chambers appeared first on Park Record.