SOUTH NEWFANE — I wish to express my gratitude and appreciation for your publishing Dan DeWalt's remarkable commentary, which has helped me understand better the phenomenon of the difficulty of how I and other Americans are seeing what is happening here at home.
The insights have helped me bring together a perspective that I have been attempting to clarify, especially in the last month with what transpired in Washington, D.C. and how the country has interpreted this. Nothing I read in The New York Times reached this level of revelation.
I am aware that to see oneself is clearly often difficult and to see oneself objectively in a time of great stress is even more so. The stance I hear - especially from our politicians recently, as they attempt to rationalize away this traumatic event of Jan. 6 - brings home what we need to look at, both personally and nationally. I see this coming to grips with this event as a watershed moment for our democracy.
Living in this time is fascinating as we have closed the gap between what happens elsewhere and, now, what happens here at home - and how we are allowing it and dealing with what we hold to be true. The perceived “reality” will lead to what comes next.
Thank you again for turning a light of awareness on this collective trauma and how we can deal with it: as awareness and recognition of the truth, which I see as the beginning of change.