Do I love America? Yes, I love America.

If I didn’t love America, I wouldn’t have been stirred by President John F. Kennedy’s challenge on a cold January day to ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

If I didn’t love America, I and many of my friends would not have joined the Peace Corps or gone to work in the slums of great American cities or marched on Washington to hear Martin Luther King or with other white and black students gone into Mississippi during Freedom Summer 1965, some never to return.

No, if I didn’t love America, I and many of my friends would not have tried to stop a senseless war in Vietnam and all the subsequent repeated errors in the Middle East.

If I didn’t love America, I would have slept through the 1960s, blocking out the assassinations of our time: John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy.

If I didn’t love America, now in my 76th year, I would not be so sickened and ashamed of our current president of the United States, Donald Trump, who has been documented on video and in text as:

Making fun of a physically challenged reporter.

Boasting about his sexual prowess.

Questioning a judge’s impartially because of his Mexican heritage.

Flaunting that he could get elected by his base even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue.

Telling four women of color, all duly elected representatives of the U.S. Congress, that they should leave. The tally goes go.

If I did not love America, I would sleep through this horror.

Instead, I and many others will do everything in our power to see that Donald Trump is not re-elected to further wreck this beautiful country.

Nicole d’Entremont

Peaks Island