When I was drafted and served (unlike draft-dodging Donald Trump), we lived by the rule: if it’s working, improve it or leave it alone.

Trump and his billionaire cronies have modified it: if it’s working, break it.

We have seen USAID dismantled and people are dying, but that doesn’t matter, since they are in countries of which no one has heard. Medicaid is in line to be emasculated so that a tax cut for corporations and the rich won’t be hindered.

Measles cases are increasing, now in at least nine states. We have had outbreaks before, but what makes this one different is the presence of Robert Kennedy Jr., a vaccine denier and conspiracy theorist, who is recommending alternative treatments, cod liver oil, antibiotics and steroids. None of these are effective and all have significant side effects.

Ukraine’s courageous stand against Russia is being denigrated so that Trump can cozy up to Vladimir Putin and other dictators as he tries to emulate them in America. We’re losing our democracy. White it is not yet George Orwell’s “1984,” we are certainly approaching that frightening scenario.

As Pastor Martin Niemoeller wrote in 1946 after the Holocaust, the Nazis for came for the Socialists, but he didn’t speak out because he wasn’t one. Then they came for the trade unionists and the Jews, and “Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

People must make their voices heard before it is too late.

Stephen Sokol, Lewiston