‘What Has Become Of America?’

Jan. 20, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette With flags at full mast (the heck with Jimmy Carter), a man who I and many others view as immoral and corrupt has become the U.S. president.

He is the first to come from reality TV, the first to refuse to concede an election, the first to encourage an insurrection, and now the first to be convicted of a crime.

What has become of America? Have Trump’s years of lying, badgering, conniving and conspiracy theorying so degraded public debate and political life that half of Americans voted for him?

We are the laughing stock of the world. Other countries have indicted our voters who “… failed to prevent the law breakers and would-be autocrat from taking over.” We have placed in the White House a person who is described as a “national humiliation.” We will pay for it in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world. The Earth and all its entities will pay as the resources that support us (and all life) will be drained. Only one resource is valued by Trump and that is he himself.

Bless all those who did their best to place a person of integrity in the Oval Office.

RACHEL B. JOHNSON Kerrs Creek