Not leaving anything to chance, maintenance crews and law enforcement officers across the U.S. began boarding up capitol buildings and erecting barricades around perimeters of the buildings this week.

The action came as authorities took seriously the FBI’s announcement that they’d picked up on threats of armed protests at state capitols around the country.

The barricading of our statehouses — while necessary — was a sad reality to each of us of the world in which we live right now.

Our hope is that, if there are to be protests in the days ahead, they be unarmed and peaceful. The last thing this country needs right now is the type of mob mentality that we saw time after time in protests across the country this summer. This past week’s shameful display of mob chaos at the nation’s Capitol was the culmination of a nation out of control.

We are saddened to think the FBI needed to post a warning of that magnitude. We are dismayed thinking that buildings that should be portraying trust and confidence among the electorate are instead relegated to portraying images of fear and frustration.

At a time when there should be a peaceful and orderly transition of power from one administration to the other, instead, there is this dark cloud that hangs over everything.

That is wrong.

This country needs to heal, and the sooner the better.

We are better than this, and it is time to start acting like it.

(THE ALPENA NEWS)