Following the news, both national and local, has become a depressing experience as never before in my long life.

Nationally President Donald Trump has been wrecking the structure of balance of power that has sustained the nation from the beginning. He has a contempt for the rule of law that is alarming.

On the local scene the protesters against the Thirty Meter Telescope project exhibit a similar contempt for the rule of law by their misuse of civil disobedience, a tactic ennobled by Mohandas Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King Jr. in the American South to combat flagrant injustice.

TMT has met all legal requirements but the protesters persist in blocking the highway, claiming their opinion that Mauna Kea is sacred justifies their defiance of the law.

Nonsense. There is nothing violative of sacredness in a telescope. Defeat of TMT would be a disaster for Hawaii and for the rule of law.

Carl H. Zimmerman

Salt Lake

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