No longer the beacon of democracy, today we see a nation tearing itself apart

The only means of answering whether America can do better following the first US presidential debate is by seeing it as a reflective microcosm of a world bedevilled by no less confusion and seemingly insurmountable division (“Biden and Trump — can’t America do better?”, 2/10). It was from a sermon delivered by English-born Puritan John Winthrop about “a city on a hill” that the centralising idea of America being an exceptional and exemplary nation was born.

America’s founding fathers later framed the US constitution in the wake of the Civil War as a document upon which the hopes of a nation resided not in democracy alone, but in the due and proper conduct of its government. As a result, on January 9, 1961, president-elect John F. Kennedy declared: “Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us — and our governments in every branch, national, state, and local, must be as a city upon a hill — constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and great responsibilities.”

Today the eyes of all people are upon a nation tearing itself apart. But it is also a reflection of ourselves and of the irrepressible need to surmount the frailties of our human condition and do better.

Vincent Zankin, Rivett, ACT

On the back of Paul Connelly’s missive of indignation about Donald Trump’s lack of condemnation of racism, white supremacy and the Proud Boys (Letters, 2/10), perhaps he missed Trump’s declaration, as did much of the media, of just one week ago and before the debate, “Donald Trump to declare KKK, Antifa as terrorist organisation”. Google it. That is about as unequivocal and unambiguous as you could possibly get and certainly conveys his thinking.

Trump’s response to much of what Joe Biden had to say after Trump zeroed in on his son Hunter should have been the Gordon Gekko line from the movie Wall Street: “You stop telling lies about me and I’ll stop telling the truth about you.”

Jim Ball, Narrabeen, NSW

It is unfair to lump Joe Biden in with Donald Trump when talking about the debate. Trump is narcissistic and notoriously hard to deal with. Biden is intelligent, honest and thoroughly decent; he is not weak. He would make a good president.

Ianthe Benson, Kings Park, SA

Understanding nuclear

Tony Gray’s piece on nuclear power (“Takeaway reactors could help power our nation”, 30/9) was timely but it needs a follow-up quickly.

Most of the people who object to nuclear power talk about the problem of nuclear waste. They appear to have a vision of great mountains of steaming rubble despoiling the countryside like the slag heaps in old mining towns. It would be useful to have a description of the waste from modern nuclear reactors in physical terms, for example, compared to the size of a regular car. They also complain that the nuclear reactors are too large, take too long to build and require too much water. It would be useful to describe modular reactors in similar terms, showing how small reactors could be assembled in a short time and do not need a vast water supply.

Brian Kable, Mount Gravatt, SA

Joseph Buttery (Letters, 2/10) says “nuclear power needs to be harnessed safely before it can be widely accepted”. In more than 60 years of commercial nuclear power generation throughout the world, only one reactor accident has occurred in which deaths due to radiation exposure and radiation health effects to the public have been observed. This was at Chernobyl in 1986 in a nuclear power plant that would not have been licensed outside the former Soviet Union. There have been no physical health effects of radiation exposure recorded at Fukushima.

What more does Joseph want?

Don Higson, Paddington, NSW