Concerns about direction of nation, world

I am not quite old enough to have read and understood, contemporaneously, the news from Europe, especially the news from and about Germany, in the decade leading up to World War II. I’m not a historian, but I have studied history (thanks to my high school history teacher Sarah Elizabeth Haynes!) and consider myself to be reasonably well read. I am concerned about the direction our great country (and the world) seems to be moving.

Two brief articles in the Nov. 7 Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette I find illustrative and disturbing are:

1) From the front-page “In the News” section, Juli Briskman was fired for giving a presidential motorcade the finger.

2) From Page 2, Tom Steyer’s presidential name calling for his ad “calling for Congress to impeach President Trump.” I see parallels between what is going on here, and what I have read and heard, contemporaneously and not, of the rise of bad, even evil governments, in what we have considered third-world countries.

I am encouraged by writings such as Mike Masterson’s beautiful Nov. 7 column, “Those Who Stood,” and by accounts of those who stand, civilian and military, for the freedoms guaranteed to citizens of the United States of America, by our Constitution.

CHARLES W. TAUNTON

Fayetteville