To the Journal editor:

Unity: “the state of being united or joined as a whole.” Unity of country is not rallying around some catch phrase or person, but instead protecting our democratic processes which weaves differing viewpoints, civil debate, and accountability into the strong fabric of checks and balances.

Loyalty: “a strong feeling of support or allegiance.” Loyalty should not be a party membership or to a leader, but instead toward our Country’s founding mission … that we are all created equal, with rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Groupthink: “is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome.” When groupthink evolves into hatred, it can lead any group loyal to their leader to ignore their own ethics and willingly participate in death and destruction.

Today is no different than the past. Any of us can fall prey to a groupthink mindset and misplaced loyalty. We can fall prey when media outlets promote groupthink mindset for profit. We can fall prey to social media algorithms which feed us reaffirming groupthink content through a “like.” We can fall prey when the people we look up to promote groupthink narratives through a tweet.

Jan. 6, 2021 will either be a wakeup call or a continuation of things to come. We can either stop and reset our mindset back to our country’s moral ideals or continue down this destructive path by conforming to others groupthink agenda.

BBC’s 2015 article: “Will dictators disappear?”

“Dictatorships start with a simple definition: When there’s no turnover in power of the executive, then it’s a dictatorship. This means dictatorships could be built around an individual who has established a personality cult, a single governmental party or a military-run oligarchy.”

As a birthday present to Hitler, misplaced loyalty and hate groupthink lead to the systematic shooting of one concentration camp captive every 2 minutes.

Unity of our country has never been so critical. We must re-examine ourselves today and place the country’s democratic moral ideals first. Today can be the first step in uniting the country and mending the fabric of our democratic union.

My simple take away: Groupthink promotes hatred against those we don’t agree with.

Democracy extracts value from those we don’t agree with.

RON MATTSON

Marquette