Donald Trump has it backward. He says we won’t have a country if his victory is not recognized.

Actually, we won’t have the country anybody wants if large numbers of people continue to ignore the evidence and believe Trump won in 2020. We will have an autocracy (dictatorship) where nobody is free.

Belief in the legitimacy of elections is key to the survival of a democracy. Belief in “The Big Steal” is tearing our country in two.

People should watch the Jan. 6 hearings on YouTube. I tried to do it and was flabbergasted at how hard it was. So let me offer tips on how to do it.

Go to YouTube.com. In the search box, type this: first hearing of the January 6th committee. (For the other seven meetings, put second, third, etc., in place of the word first.)

Click on the magnifying glass. A large column of options will then appear, representing the broadcasts of many TV channels. They will have numbers indicating how long the broadcasts were.

Choose one in the vicinity of  two and a half hours. Much shorter ones are edited versions from the TV stations. Much longer ones include commentary from talking heads.

Way at the bottom, for some hearings, people will see the Fox News version, but Fox News did not broadcast all of them. The PBS version is the best, in my opinion, because it does not clutter the screen with annoying extras.

Try to stay awake. The material is dry, but fascinating.

Ben Lounsbury, Auburn