Before the horrific events of Jan. 6 rolled out, my husband started playing the YouTube video of the airplane passengers heckling Sen. Mitt Romney on his flight from Salt Lake City to Washington, D.C.
In nauseated disbelief, I asked him to stop the video. I could not watch or listen.
As a pediatrician, now retired, I saw patients with disheartening frequency who were traumatized by bullies at school, and to hear adults behave no better than the schoolyard bully was simply sickening and discouraging.
We are supposed to teach our children not to belittle and intimidate their peers. We are supposed to teach our children that conflicts aren’t resolved by demeaning and ganging up on individuals. We are supposed to encourage our children to think independently, formulating their opinions after educating themselves with well-founded facts, and to engage with their adversaries in thoughtful exchanges. We are supposed to teach our children to resolve conflict not through violence and cowardly bullying, but through compromise and negotiation.
The adults on that flight to Washington could have asked Romney to discuss his political stances and to express their frustration with his choices. Instead, they ganged up on him and chanted gutless epithets at him while he was trapped. So feckless. And so ironic.
The person they were defending would be, in a few short hours, continuing his long-standing efforts to incite a motley, dangerous mob, armed with assault weapons and Molotov cocktails, to overthrow our government, while inflicting terror and harm on our men and women in blue and our democratically elected officials.
Sarah A. Ormsby, Millcreek