Editor,

I’m old, and feel lucky to be old.

I’ve lived through WWII, the Cold War and Russian Nikita Khrushchev’s shoe slamming threats, Korean Episode, The Missile Crisis of the ’60s, our embarrassing defeat in Cuba, the Nightmare in Vietnam, the Grand Invasion of Granada, the “Three Stooge” Desert Storm, the Public Deceptions of Iraq, and survived the Republicans’ last debate.

I was born while my parents were recovering from Republican President Herbert Hoover’s great depression. I managed to survive Ronald Reagan’s depression, that few seem to remember, while reading of the suicide epidemic in farming states as he took our nation from being the world’s biggest lender to being the world’s biggest debtor in a mere eight years. We all are survivors of the most recent scourge when the Republican’s JINSA [Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs] dominated, Dick Cheney-led, George W. Bush Administration did worse in half the time.

We’ve watched the personal pain and economic devastation brought on by criminal scandals like the Enron debacle and Bernie Madoff calamity.

But the thing that amazes us the most is that the current advocates for the Grand Old Party whose most verbosely venerated champion’s declaration is “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall,” now want to build one just like it themselves.

Mr. Putin is probably laughing himself silly.

Do we dare ask “What’s Next”?

AL & BARBARA WILLIAMS

Oak Harbor