Is 2020 an anomaly or an inevitability?

Where do we begin? Our world has changed so much this year. Or has it?

Maybe it has just brought our inadequacies to the surface and shined our worst fears in our faces. We now should know how important the little things that we take for granted are and how they complete us.

We should realize that systemic racism is still here and open up our hearts to change. We need to remember that all lives matter in sickness, in war, in every day life.

As individuals, we need to understand that the chaos of 2020 is real and learn the lessons it has unveiled to each of us to care about each other.

SUE McKELVEY

North Strabane

Systemic rot

Some apologists still claim that police violence against people of color is chiefly due to the serial misconduct of individual rogue cops — and not also due to systemic law enforcement racism.

Essentially the same argument against systemic change was also advanced when serial priest pedophilia was first reported. The sexual abuse of children, we were told, was due to individual pastoral rottenness — and not the systemic failure of the institutional church. Gradually, however, it became clear that much of the ecclesiastical barrel — with its staves of cover-up cardinals and hoops of enabling bishops — was also rotten.

This systemic putrescence — much due to the urging of the laity — had to be acknowledged and recognized before there could be any chance for true reformation and healing in the church.

Similarly, the scourge of police brutality against people of color cannot be eradicated simply by prosecuting individual acts of police misconduct. Notwithstanding the goodwill of many police officers, people of color are systemically treated as “the other” by institutional law enforcement. The superstructure of law enforcement, including its qualified police immunity, code of silence and enabling collective bargaining agreements, operates — intentionally or otherwise — to keep Black people in bondage.

Until law enforcement’s systemic bias against people of color is generally acknowledged, there will be no chance for meaningful change or reconciliation between the police and minority communities which they have sworn to protect and serve.

JOHN KENT LEWIS

Duquesne Heights

Lead by example

I have been shocked to see the news footage of the recent Donald Trump rallies in Oklahoma and Arizona, showing his supporters standing shoulder to shoulder, many of whom are not wearing masks. All politics aside, our president should be leading by example.

Instead, he is placing his reelection campaign ahead of the health and safety not only of his supporters, but that of his own staffers and even himself. I can only imagine how it would feel to have lost a loved one to the virus and hear the president making jokes about COVID-19.

It is time for common sense to prevail. The only way to slow the pandemic and the economic ravages it has wrought is if everyone follows the guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and puts the safety of others above their own selfish concerns, including President Trump.

DIANA BARBOUR

Carnegie

Model behavior

So many of us do our part observing the posted rules and wearing masks in public places. But far too often, I board a public bus driven by an operator with no mask. I wait in line with other masked patrons at a coffee shop when a police officer enters for his coffee without a mask.

I understand both bus drivers and police have strong unions, but why are those drivers and officers permitted to risk my health because of their machismo?

JAY POLIZIANI

Greenfield

American tradition

As a constituent in the 16th District represented by Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, I received an email titled “The Toppling of Statues Divides Us, Prevents Progress on Race Relations and Police Accountability.” Mr. Kelly begins, “Destroying monuments won’t rewrite our history, but it can prevent us from learning from both good and bad aspects of it.”

Since many of these recently targeted monuments have been around for almost 100 years, starting with the “Lost Cause” myth after the Civil War and accelerating during the era of Jim Crow racism and intimidation, I would submit that we have had plenty of time to “learn” whatever the hell we were going to learn from these public relics.

This email continues in pertinent part, “Additionally, I oppose the removal of monuments to America’s Founding Fathers and others from our history who established or fought to preserve our Constitutional Republic by politicians or mobs.”

I wonder. One could Google images depicting the toppling of the statue of King George III by a “mob” in 1770. I mean, we’re Americans. We have traditions.

Given the rebellious nature of our Founding Fathers — who were men, not demigods — if we educated them about today’s issues and the current occupant of the White House, I suspect they would inquire as to a purveyor of tar and feathers.

DENNIS A. CASEY

Butler