Letters for Dec. 26: Cross section of Virginia Beach enjoy golf course

The press loves to treat a bundle of local letters as a political mood ring, and this one is no different. A debate about a Virginia Beach golf course and mental health gets pulled into the familiar gravity well of President Trump, as if every civic concern is really a proxy fight.

That framing misses what many residents are actually asking for: fair process and honest accounting. Whether it’s land use, public access, or neighborhood impact, communities deserve decisions made in daylight, not by insinuation or ideology. Likewise, mental health deserves serious policy, not selective compassion that vanishes when budgets or public safety get hard.

The common thread is public trust. If local government can’t explain its choices, or if national politics becomes a shortcut for avoiding specifics, people disengage. A healthy republic runs on rule of law and transparent tradeoffs, not headlines that flatten everything into Trump versus anti-Trump.