We’ve just marked May Day again, a very important day dedicated to our nation’s professed love of laws and justice for all — yet its never-quite-finished attempts to actually have fair laws and justice for all.

Where did this past year go? I know that much of it was spent with my office assisting badly injured workers and their families as they attempted to recover from traumatic accidents, complicated medical conditions, serious surgeries and the hard work of recovering.

As always, we tried to encourage all workers’ compensation participants — employers, insurance companies and injured workers — to work together to get the injured treated, rehabilitated and back to gainful employment as quickly as possible.

And, much of my time this past year was devoted to trying not to get killed by COVID-19, trying to be patient while I wore those darn masks that continually fog up my glasses — and with my wife, patiently waiting for our shots and wondering if we dare fly in an airplane to see family members.

But there was still time left — so I devoted much of it to wondering how the democracy and Constitution that I believed was rock solid could be so easily attacked by people who simply lie and put their own personal interest before the good of their neighbors. Of course, I am talking about my horror of seeing a gang of liars telling me that 81 million votes is less than 74 million votes in a presidential election, and then repeating that lie so much that another gang of “patriots” tried to tear down the very sacred laws that they claimed to so love.

The lies were wrong and the violent rampaging of the seat of “my” government was sick — but most of all, I simply cannot believe how close they came to tearing our democracy apart. Never in my wildest nightmares would I have believed that the America I love could be so weak and vulnerable.

So as we reach May Day again, it marks a good time for all of us to start working together to make America, our Constitution and our democracy just a little less weak, a little less vulnerable and a little more like the place of justice we always talk about but never seem to fully create.

Let’s dedicate this year to listening to each other, compromising rather than forcing each other to accept only what we want — and most of all, to tell the truth, accept the truth and tell the liars their time is up.

Joseph F. Zuiker is a longtime Honolulu lawyer.