Letters

I take exception to last week’s letter to the editor by Thomas M. Jones, titled “Enough, Already” [July 8]. While I believe Mr. Jones’s desire was to express his patriotism, and he surely has the right to criticize any news publication, his suggestion that the January 6 insurrection was just “a few thousand Halloween-dressed Trump supporters who had lost their minds,” in my opinion, was ridiculous. He basically suggested that it was just one of Trump’s rallies gone a little awry.

First of all, he ignores the fact that these thousands of Trump supporters were desecrating the walls of Congress, attempting to stop the certification of a legitimate election and threatening elected officials. This mob of thousands of people was violent. And that’s what made it, and anything like it, so wrong.

Because violence toward institutions is wrong.

Violence toward other people’s property is wrong.

Violence toward nature is wrong.

Violence toward people who don’t look like us, think like us or who have less power than we do is simply wrong.

On January 6, these Trump supporters — and that’s who they were, Mr. Jones got that right — intended to be violent. They came prepared. They had been fueled by Trump for five years, and they finally had their chance to act out the violence that he repeatedly condoned and encouraged.

Our country is becoming more and more violent, and I fear our tolerance for violence is increasing. It is not a mystery to me that in the past year we witnessed a man being murdered on video, and the crime rates in our urban centers increasing exponentially.

So, above all, that’s what we cannot forget about January 6 — the violence of it. If there is any opportunity that we have to speak out about violence, we had better do so, because otherwise our tolerance for violence will continue to increase, and we will come up with convincing rationalizations in order to condone it.

Paula Angelone, Ph.D.

Southampton Village