Let's seek the truth about Jan. 6 horror

Let’s seek the truth about Jan. 6 horror

Last year, as I watched in disbelief the storming of our Capitol on Jan. 6, I was thankful my father wasn’t alive to witness the unimaginable show of violence and disrespect within the halls of our democratic symbol ["Poll: Most in GOP say Jan. 6 wasn’t very violent," News, Jan. 5].

Dad was a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army and also a member of the military police who served in both World War II and the Korean War. He loved his country and the values the flag represents.

To witness Americans using the flag as spears to intentionally harm law enforcement as well as in hand-to-hand combat as a visible reality of domestic terrorism that day was frightening.

My prayer is for the politicians to seek truth and vote their conscience in order to maintain our precious democracy that was attacked on that infamous day.

Dad saw America as the land of freedom, decency, and civility. It is my hope that those in elected positions have the courage to acknowledge that "the emperor has no clothes" rather than give in to political pressure.

— Susan Martin, Islip

It’s been a year since the worst insurrection against the United States since the Civil War. While hundreds of foot soldiers in the assault on the Capitol have been arrested, the instigators of the attempted coup are still walking around free, continuing to spread the lie of a rigged election that caused the deadly Jan. 6 riot, which they also claim was nonviolent.

At the end of the Civil War, hoping to heal the fractured nation, the federal government opted not to prosecute the traitorous leaders of the Confederacy. That failure to hold them accountable resulted in the myth of the Lost Cause, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, Jim Crow, and suppression of the Black right to vote for 100 years.

Let’s hope the Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, does not make that same mistake again.

— Edmund Fountaine, Oakdale