I was dismayed but not surprised to read the results of the Mirror’s poll to the query: “Do you think it was the right decision for President Donald Trump to call in the National Guard to police Washington, D.C.?” Fifty-six percent of respondents said it was OK.

This is typical of the Mirror’s readership. Allowing themselves for generations to be snookered by the Republican party, and having been further brainwashed by Fox News, the majority of central Pennsylvanians are willfully and seemingly happily ignorant to both facts and history.

Being obtuse when it comes to fascism, authoritarianism and the methods of dictatorship, and refusing to learn from history, they will be condemned to repeat it and suffer the consequences.

You may think that Trump has your back now, but after he is finished being “your retribution” he will then come for you, and what will you think then?

If you don’t view martial law in our streets as alarming and dangerous, then you are not the patriotic citizens you profess to be.

Here’s a litmus test for the 56-percenters and all who feel the same. Ask yourselves, and answer truthfully, if President Barack Obama had done this, or any of the other authoritarian acts the present administration has and continues to do almost daily, how would you have felt and what would you have thought? Would you have been in favor?

I think not. I wouldn’t have been then, and you should not be so now.

Kirk J. Dodson

Duncansville