Let’s show aloha, and offer support

You can see it in their eyes, and that’s all you can see with their masks on. It’s fear, anger, perhaps resentment, at having to wear a mask. Many of our fellow citizens, especially those less fortunate, have been pushed to the edge. They have become pressure cookers ready to blow at the slightest provocation. They are mad at the world. They may blame and hate everybody and often hate themselves. It has gotten worse lately, caused or exacerbated by COVID-19 and its repercussions.

Our police encounter these walking and aggressively driving time bombs all the time. And now, the police must be extra wary of irrational behavior.

So let’s give some support and aloha to those who help protect us. We must also be wary and protect ourselves. We cannot control others. But we can try to show kindness, patience, empathy and a little extra tolerance during this tough time.

How about all the time? Let’s be nice out there, too.

Dave Akers

Makiki

Personal freedom only goes so far

I fail to understand the outrage about loss of freedom over public health restrictions to address the COVID-19 variant surge.

It is not a loss of control of your body, your ability to make parental decisions nor the beginning of an authoritarian regime.

You are free to work in a different place if your employer requires vaccines or testing.

You are free to home-school your children so they don’t need to wear masks. You are free to avoid those establishments that require vaccines or masks.

You are not free to expose me, my family, my co-workers and my community to the COVID-19 virus. You are not free to work with me in a health care setting, to visit my home or to send your children to my neighborhood school.

Compare your loss of freedoms to those endured under the Holocaust and the Nazi persecutions of World War II and thank our free society for your right to disagree, to conduct public protests and to make your own best choices.

Big mahalo to Gov. David Ige for his efforts to keep us all safe.

Barbara Mathews

Kailua

Stay home if you’re unvaccinated, sick

OK, cool. Choose not to vaccinate. But stay home when you get sick. Don’t take up hospital beds and put health care workers at risk.

Debbie Aldrich

Retired registered nurse

Haleiwa

U.S. Capitol police deserve support

The Capitol police thin blue line saved democracy in America on Jan. 6 from an insurrection. It’s high time the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) showed them a little more respect and support, especially after the recent suicides of Capitol police officers.

The FOP supported Donald Trump for president but they should have denounced their support when Trump sent the insurrectionist mob to storm the Capitol to try to stop the democratic process.

Andrew Kachiroubas

Moiliili

Rail transit system will be a failure

What is wrong here (“HART must seek realistic options,” Star-Advertiser, Our View, Aug. 5)?

What is so difficult here? The rail project was misconceived and mismanaged all those years, way over budget and way short of projected completion. And not enough money in sight to finish.

What is the best option? Stop it! Stop it today! Tear down those ugly concrete pillars, grind them down, rebuild our rotten roads. Keep the unions doing this work and collecting their paychecks for years to come. Keep the tourist tax to pay for it.

It also has puzzled me, to the point of annoyance, why this newspaper has refused to see this option as the most sensible one.

We cannot afford the rail transit system. It is going nowhere and it will never run. Bet the ranch on it. Never. People will keep the comfort of their cars instead of standing up in uncomfortable rail cars.

Wise heads will prevail, and it will be torn down.

Gerhard C. Hamm

Nuuanu

Haiku Stairs access won’t work out

“Managed access” is touted as the way to “save” the Haiku Stairs in Kaneohe. The scheme calls for some third-party entity to manage the stairs, but at what cost?

Fortunately, the recent commentary by Jay Silberman gives a clue: “Hundreds of thousands of people (yes, many of them illegally) have climbed the Stairs since they were opened in the 1980s,” and, “20,000 people a year … in the 1980s” (“Managed access to Haiku Stairs better than taking them out,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, July 27).

These figures give a range of 5,000 to 20,000 people per year and a charge per person of $200 to $50, respectively, to yield $1 million of gross revenue. A very rosy 330 revenue days per year, with 15 to 60 hikers per day, would yield $1 million in gross revenue.

Considering the likely costs of operations, maintenance, security and insurance, the managed access scheme is clearly a non-starter.

Bill Friedl

Kailua

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