Flash Back
In the 1930s, the U.S. couldn’t figure out that Hitler’s Germany was taking a hard right turn toward dictatorship. However, in 2025, Germany’s diplomatic corps clearly sees what it calls America’s “maximum concentration of power with the president at the expense of Congress and the states.” (“Leaked memo reveals alarming German warnings over Trump,” Politico, Jan. 19, 2025.) America’s intellectual and constitutional downturn started long before 2015 and before the steep decline in SAT scores in the 1960s.
It essentially started with the authoritarian veer of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s but was checked to a degree and rolled out more slowly here. After defeating Hitler’s Germany in World War II, America has been braying about world dominance so loud and for so long that we stepped into the same hot mess Germany did nearly a hundred years earlier. How sad for us and the world.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Sonoma County
Insurrection Day
I have been informed that a new national holiday will be created in honor of the new administration: National Insurrection Day. The date would be January 6.
Gary Sciford
Santa Rosa
S-S-Snake Cover
The Year of the Snake, huh? (Bohemian, Jan. 15, 2025.) Perfect! Look what just slithered into The White House!
Bob Canning
Petaluma
