Former Jefferson County GOP party chair Steve Crosby is correct when he points out, in his Dec. 14 perspective, that the Democratic campaign strategy put Donald Trump’s character front and center. What’s false is his claim that Trump’s racism was invented by the Clinton campaign. This is an example of the crude revisionism practiced on cable news and elsewhere.

The fact is, one reason the Democrats chose to talk up Trump’s racism was that it was already common knowledge. The whole world had heard his disgraceful speeches. The statements he made about Hispanic immigrants in 2015 were the most openly bigoted remarks by a serious presidential candidate in decades.

For that matter, Trump’s racism was part of his public image long before he ran for office. When I was living on the East Coast and he was a newly minted celebrity on the fringes of the New York political scene, making ugly remarks when he called into morning radio shows from his limousine, I knew he was a racist, and so did everyone else who was paying attention.

Like most people, I am already more tired of discussing this man’s personality than I can express. I would love to make it through the rest of my life without giving him another thought. But what I won’t accept in silence is the claim coming once again from every dark corner that our memories are false, that the things we have observed, as thinking individuals, are inventions of marketing and spin. They are not. Nor is it the case that when a man wins an election, his bigotry becomes a new norm.

We do not have to abide by it, or bow to it, and we won’t.

PAUL LEATHERS

Port Townsend