When driving locally, I generally listen to music on a cell phone app. Having forgotten my phone on a recent day, I was “forced” to listen to the news. When I returned home, I was aware of a resulting feeling of disappointment and sadness.

Most troublesome was an interview with a White House official who described the Hamas attack of October 2023 as a barbaric act that makes reasonable Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip and the deaths of over 50,000 of its citizens, 30% of whom were children. Such a statement supports that there is plenty of barbarism to go around on both sides.

To my mind, it is always wrong and unjustified to kill children, irrespective of whose “side” they are on. In addition to this, over the last 50 years the “tit for tat” approach has never resulted in cessation of the killing or problem solving. The United States deserves a significant portion of the blame because most of the weapons causing the killing are manufactured in our country and because support of Israel has proven to be politically expedient.

It is not wrong or antisemitic to criticize Israel for its killing of innocent children. Hamas deserves equal criticism for its killings of Oct. 7. There are no clean hands here. Both political parties, Democrats and Republicans, are guilty.

The justification of this behavior is a result of twisted thinking in which we consciously manipulate facts in a way that allows us to violate standards that make us human. This act of justification is the most severe crime of all.

The threatened ignoring of judicial decisions is defended by President Trump as being justified by his election mandate. Twisted thinking. The efforts to forgive education loans to students and COVID distributions to all citizens by President Biden were unjustified and inflationary but politically expedient. Twisted thinking.

The deportation of legal immigrants without hearings and the presence of ICE agents in our schools is justified by President Trump as being justified by his election win. Twisted thinking. The holding back of grant funds to educational institutions, the punishment of legal organizations previously involved in cases brought against Mr. Trump and the unreasoned firing of our government workers are all examples of twisted thinking.

How have we arrived at this state of twisted patriotism? How can we return to the rule of law, respect of the judiciary and allegiance to our Constitution when the next election is three and a half years in the future? For the New York Times, the journalist David Brooks a few weeks ago wrote that that our best available tool is peaceful demonstration. It needs to be broad-based and frequent. We cannot rely on others or on self-correction.

Demonstrate, demonstrate, demonstrate. After all, it is our country and the Constitution is the map that allows all of us, independents, Democrats and Republicans, to do that.