Editor,

In the Saturday, Jan. 9 article about Trump supporters in Oak Harbor are comments by Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks. He said Trump supporters hold “corrosive and anti-democratic” ideas.

Banks does not say which ideas. He sent an email to elected officials encouraging them to be the thought police to their staff/employees and questions their faithful duty.

Seems a bit of “thought intimidation” or “mandatory group think” to me.

Most Trump supporters hold these ideas:

• We have a right to free and fair elections. Courts and Congress are a recourse when we have questions about integrity of any election;

• We have the right to challenge and demand election integrity without being silenced by political intimidation or censorship;

• We have the right to present arguments to the Supreme Court and not to be disenfranchised if they fail to act due to political/media intimidation;

• We have a right to be upset with media activists who treat half of America as deplorable rubes. We can reject/challenge political media narratives through our freedom of thought/conscience;

• We have an obligation as Americans to fight for the country as patriots through constitutional freedoms of speech and the right to assemble and protest, and;

• We have a right to be heard by our representatives without those representatives being scourged for doing their faithful duty.

Which of these rights and ideas are you calling “corrosive and and anti-democratic,” Mr. Banks? Neither supporters for Trump nor Biden have the right to vandalize, burn, murder on private or public property.

Those who were protesting on the corner in Island County, and the majority of those at the Capitol rally were not among those Americans who violated the Capitol building.

Mr. Banks broad-brushes Americans with an undefined label of having “corrosive and anti-democratic” ideas without specifying the ideas. In America people have a right to their own thoughts.

I hope Mr. Banks is prosecuting behavior and not “thoughts and political ideas” in the exercise of his duty.

Clairann Haney

Oak Harbor