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When progressives protested human rights violations (kids being torn from parents and put in cages, indefinite detention for asylum seekers, Black people being killed by police), we were attempting to make this country better.

Yet, we often heard two common refrains from the right:

First, “If you break the law, you deserve it.”

This was used to justify children torn from parents, peaceful protesters shot with rubber bullets and Blacks being killed by police for committing a misdemeanor/having a past record/noncompliance

Second, “If you don’t like it here, you should leave.”

The reality that they refused to see was that we were trying to make this country better.

Now Trump has committed sedition, and his supporters have committed insurrection when they stormed the Capitol in an effort to halt the peaceful change of power. They broke the law.

Storming the Capitol was not an attempt to make this country better. They did it because they were deluded by Trump (and other Republican leaders) into believing false claims about the election or were angry that they didn’t get their way. The aim of the insurrectionists (including Trump, many Republican representatives and a couple of senators) was to trample on states’ rights and disenfranchise millions of voters. This is not love for our country.

None of this was an attempt to make this country better.

Angie Hanson

Albert Lea