Would anyone ever have thought the events of Jan. 6, 2021, would happen in the United States of America? Is it possible for anyone to imagine that a group of protesters could take the horrible position to the point that members of Congress would need military protection from our own citizens?

The security personnel and police officers who spoke Tuesday of what they experienced that day brought realism to just how bad things got that day. You can blame it on the emotions stirred by speeches or by rumors of stolen elections and other such nonsense, but it comes down to that old statute of knowing right from wrong.

It is wrong to attack the Capitol. It is wrong to destroy windows and doors. It is wrong to harm or kill police officers. It is wrong to threaten the lives of anyone, including elected officials for any reason — and that includes because your candidate lost an election.

It is hard to imagine that history will remember Jan. 6, 2021, for anything other than the crimes that were committed and the hate that filled the hearts of the mob that day. No, we can’t excuse their actions, no matter what they were fooled into believing. When it came time to break windows and break the law, each of the actors knew right from wrong and chose to take the path of crime for their own personal satisfaction. They consciously decided to kill or attempt to kill other citizens of the United States who were doing nothing more than performing their daily jobs.

Even if the criminals were mad at the whole world, it did not give them the right to attack another citizen in the name of politics, or any other reason. “Violence is not the answer” and “Give peace a chance” were two well-known and well-used phrases from the 1960s and hippie generation.

During those years, Americans were dying in Southeast Asia trying to secure freedoms for strangers in that part of the world. Americans were torn apart by that struggle in a way we hadn’t seen since the Civil War, but even then, no one took the demonstrations and marches to a point of killing outmanned and unprepared peacekeepers. Sadly, people on the other side of this election argument haven’t learned any better from the ugly, embarrassing incident either.

Today, we received a phone call from a woman attempting to intimidate us to write her view of this, but in all honesty she sounded almost as ridiculous as the crazy fools that will forever be known as the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. She was just as hateful; the only difference was she didn’t have a battering ram to strike with. Yes, everything that happened Jan. 6 was disgusting, criminal and plain awful. Too bad most people learned nothing from it, regardless of which way they conduct their lives.

— RV