To the Editor:

This nation is at a crossroads. The fork in the road is stark and the choice to do the right thing to preserve this democracy could not be clearer.

Yet most Senate Republicans, like their colleagues in the House of Representatives, cast today’s inaugural impeachment events as a farce, a waste of time. In full view and ever brazenly, they turn from their sworn oath to protect this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

 I would say: Shame on all those in Congress, who, by dint of their rhetoric and actions supportive of the insurrectionists, would try to escape blame for the attempted coup of Jan. 6, midwifed and violently birthed by former president Donald Trump and his raging band of domestic terrorists. And an infinity of shame upon him.

The evidence the House impeachment managers will present this week and possibly beyond is evidence we have all seen play out again and again on national TV and on YouTube and other social media. Many House and Senate members were under siege that day, fearing for their lives.

Any thinking person might conclude: “Gee, if that was me hiding under chairs and behind doors, I might believe I was being hunted down. And I might want these characters and their leaders brought to justice.” Just possibly.

But no, that is not so. The House and Senate Republicans want desperately to whitewash this assault not only on the election and the Capitol but on the institutions of democracy that hold this government together.

They think we are fools, that we will go along with their rewrite of still raw history. Their daily grasping to cast this flirt with tyranny as no more than a riot ties one’s synapses into hopeless tangles.

I would call these pandering men and women cowards. The only allegiance they have is to themselves, retaining their power by curtseying endlessly to a base totally twisted up into swirls of Q-Anon conspiracies and gun love.

But it is not just the base that nods its collective head towards Mar-A-Lago. All who voted for Trump who still remain in his camp after the heinous actions in early January are responsible for future attacks on this republic by their very silence.

Their willful lack of protest, which shouts from every corner of this nation, in villages and towns and cities alike, is abominable and complicit as these mouth-taped sycophants continue to try to blanket and shut down the truth. They continue to hide behind their own closed doors, crouching under their own chairs, hoping the rest of us do not notice.

No, no one in Trump’s camp, save a few outspoken Republicans in Congress, and scattered enclaves here and there, will stand up for the survival of this democratic republic. Frankly, I think all of those who vote not to convict should be expelled from Congress, not just Marjorie Taylor Green. They are a stain on this republic that will never be scrubbed away, no matter the amount of whitewash applied.

Betty Head

Altamont