To the editor:

In response to Paul Nordan’s April 17 letter to the editor, no, Mr. Nordan, it is not just you alone sensing a lack of common sense in America today. However, it is not plain in your letter what you consider to be common sense.

I think most would agree the support Donald Trump has garnered truly amazes long established Republicans (certainly Democrats as well). Yet the man gives voice to disaffected Americans disgusted with a political class undergirded by a vast bureaucracy insulated from the prospect of no longer receiving government issued checks. Is it not then common sense for Trump supporters to seek a candidate who threatens to upend the indolence of “the establishment,” and who defies the fund raising apparatus of the political parties?

As for Mrs. Clinton’s nefarious email practices, the president himself assures the nation she has not at all compromised national security by her departure from specified government procedure for securing sensitive State Department communications. Is it not common sense then for Clinton supporters, in their fervent belief that it is the time for our first woman president, to discount the allegations of wrongdoing?

Senator Sanders proclaims he is a Democratic Socialist, as distinguished from socialists who would dissolve all forms of private property. Sanders merely seeks an equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth so that it can be used for better social ends such as free college education. Is it not then common sense for the uneducated to see huge gain in such a proposition?

I completely agree there isn’t much common sense in the extraordinary measures government at every level seems to think are necessary to accommodate the LGBT community. But this I believe goes more to the nation’s propensity to sue for gain rather than to protect the rights of people whose sexual orientations are unconventional. Politicians are reluctant to spend public treasury on legal expenses or damage awards which buy very few votes. Better to have regulations in place that diffuse accountability for wrongful treatment by government entities.

The national debt. Now there is a point where Americans have utterly no common sense, largely because the numbers are mind numbing if not impossible to grasp. The fact of the incomprehensible size of the debt is a godsend for politicians. Voters can not effectively stop what seems too vague to understand. We should be announcing each and every day, not the daily accumulation of the national debt, but instead how many schools did not get built, how many water systems did not get upgraded, or how many bridges did not get replaced because the money is used to pay interest on government debt.

On your last point regarding real trauma, you’re right that real trauma is “looking at a string of 50 caliber tracers coming your way.” But Americans who have never accepted personal responsibility can hardly be expected to understand something like a projectile on the way to disintegrating their arm. These are people who become indignant by the mere inconvenience of personal responsibility. Trauma for them is the personal sacrifice of having to tolerate dissenting opinion.

No, Mr. Nordan, you’re not alone. A bit old fashioned perhaps. And this old fashioned guy respects your courage for publicly wondering why common sense by any measure seems recently unfashionable.

H. E. Lovelace
Tryon, N.C.