Letter to the editor: Polarization has replaced unity

I was touring Ireland when foreign terrorists attacked the U.S. on 9/11. So it wasn’t until I returned three weeks later that I really began understanding that event. I recall how proud I was seeing the waving flags and sense of national unity I returned home to. But no more.

Since witnessing the Jan. 6 insurrection by domestic terrorists, I find nothing to be even remotely similar to how it was more than 20 years ago. Then Americans were eager to find out all we could about the terrorists and how things happened. Today some attempt to rewrite history and find comfort in lies and denialism. Political polarization has displaced unity.

I point with sadness to leaders of a once-proud GOP who now refuse to even participate in investigations of the ugliness of Jan. 6. Even some of those who ran for their lives on that day now ignore subpoenas and invitations to come forward and assist investigators. Those who sat in high places and with first-hand knowledge of what we now know to be an attempted coup remain uncooperative. Instead they shamelessly kneel on the neck of democracy. Imagine if you can any Americans acting following 9/11 the way some GOP leaders do today.

Is it all because they believe the “big lie”? Is it their worship of a defeated, twice-impeached former president? Is it social media or Fox (Faux) News? Or is it who we have become?

A year ago I wrote in this space that I was angry, sad and afraid of what I had witnessed. I continue to be so.

Glenn R. Plummer

Unity