How can we move forward from the day of disorder?

CONCORD, CA—As I started to write this month’s Pulse of Concord, Trump supporters stormed the Capital building and looted the Senate chamber. At the same time, the president described them as great patriots, special people whom he loves and “feels their pain” – along with a whole repetition of outrageous lies about the election.

The Confederate Battle Flag, which the tens of thousands of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia could not bring to Washington, was waved in the halls of Congress.

America, you have disgraced yourself. The behavior of the president has disgraced our country, yet the real sadness in my heart is a simple fact: Not one of the people that I know who voted for Trump in consideration of all this and his actions of the last two months has said that they would vote differently.

I know what it is like to protest, having taken over my college campus two or three times and marched on Washington and slept on the Mall with from a few thousand to a million people in protest of a war that was killing 100-200 Americans every week in Vietnam. Never was there even a hint of storming the Capital building.

This ideological mindset is not unknown locally, nor is it limited to just the Trumpers who provided about 25 percent of the votes of the electorate here. After our own City Council elections, I reached out to those who did not win and said: Let us sit down and talk to see if we can work on some common issues to go forward. While two accepted and one politely declined, the response by one was to go on a tirade and call me a liar and refuse. When I responded that it seemed like they were having a bad day and the offer to sit and talk still stood, the response was to notify me (and with copies to others) that they would not even open up my emails.

These are dangerous times, and we need to reach out and prove that we are still worthy of the ideals of America: one people, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Send comments to EdiBirsan@gmail.com or 510-812-8180.