Readers sound off on Fauci’s accusers, crypto regulations and a new street drug

The Fauci hearing displayed our decline

Richmond, Va.: I read with interest the editorial “Prosecuting Tony Fauci is an affront to justice” (Aug. 9). Thank you for writing this piece. I agree with every word.

As an imperfect American, I sense that “from sea to shining sea” our country is eroding. In James H. Cone’s book “The Cross and The Lynching Tree,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told his wife after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, “This is what is going to happen to me also. I keep telling you this is such a sick society.” Sadly, King was correct — we are a sick society. Fauci and his family received credible death threats, requiring Fauci to have a security detail. Unfortunately, threats against our public servants aren’t new. James E. Ryan’s book “Five Miles Away, A World Apart” documents threats against U.S. District Court Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr. in the early 1970s based on Merhige’s orders for multiple school systems in Virginia to desegregate. Merhige endured “being spat upon, threats to his family, the family dog was shot, and a cottage on his property where his mother-in-law was living was bombed.”

Of course, during the hearing, U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno only added to the disrespect toward Fauci with his inappropriate language. I hope America’s “unhealthy obsession” with disrespect, incivility, division and the truth will not be our end.