DEAR EDITOR:

Our president has been impeached by the House of Representatives — what’s next? We are painfully divided over whether he should remain in office. We have time to act carefully. Should we hear evidence from White House witnesses at trial or not? Senators need to know we expect testimony from Trump’s top people, and we must tell them while acting as united Americans.

The increasing ferocity of unkind words exchanged by Republicans and Democrats means we have become a country where arguments no longer occur in faraway places. These days, our disagreements live among us — twisting sinuously through our streets and sidling along corners of neighborhoods. I look at social media posts from a letter-writer with whom I disagreed, and I am dismayed the person has proclaimed, “All Democrats are sickos.”

But they aren’t, nor are Republicans; and it’s time to work together to determine the amount of control we are willing to accept from a president who says the Constitution permits him to do whatever he wants.

While we all care about health care, education, jobs, climate, etc., we must realize those issues create texture in the fabric of our daily lives. The fabric itself comes from our Constitution. Now we decide whether to keep our good sturdy cotton fabric or whether we want some cheaper new synthetic stuff.

Will we maintain the marvelous Republic that our Founding Fathers created for us? Or will we stumble onto some new type of government in which one man’s decisions dominate the entire country, with his unchallenged wishes carried out by those who follow him?

Are the Democrats correct in their belief that our president twists every rule and law to suit his whim? Are the Republicans accurate in their claim that Democrats are socialists who hated Trump from the start?

I know this one truth — whatever we believe, it comes from a patriotic love of country.

What I desperately want to ask, would you think if you could be convinced that Trump demanded favors from the president of Ukraine in order to ruin his closest rival and ensure his own reelection? What if Putin urged Trump to blame Ukraine for the 2016 election interference, thus clearing Russia, so that costly sanctions could be lifted?

We have to separate toxicity from the issues. We can start by refusing to walk down a dangerous path of hatred. We have to remember that we live among friends and neighbors, and they are neither sickos nor socialists. Look deep into your hearts, and let’s require our senators to uncover the truth about Trump, wherever it may lead us.

LINDA COCUZZI RICHTER

Niles