In the year 2020, we lived with a pandemic and a hotly contested presidential race. Strong feelings made their appearance, frustration and anger among them.

Several months ago, I was having lunch with a friend and the topic of politics came up, specifically how bitterly polarized and angry the country has become in the last ten years. 

To the Editor:

The world as we know it is changing dramatically. We have entered the era of the polycrisis in which a cluster of related global and local risks with compounding effects are having unprecedented effect — greater than the sum of the individual risks.  

It’s clear from numerous reports out of Congress that most, if not all, Republicans think Donald Trump is a buffoon and an idiot. A few have said this in public (e.g., Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger).

To the Editor:

Some people still believe that America is involved in a traditional Democratic/Republican political struggle.

To the editor:

Remember the saying from Vietnam days that we had to destroy the village in order to save it?

The delegates had spent a sweltering Philadelphia summer behind sealed doors and windows debating and drafting a constitution for what would become the United States of America. Asked what they had to show for it, Benjamin Franklin famously replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

You don’t need an invading army to destroy a democracy, as Russia is attempting to do to Ukraine.

To the Editor: A word most of us are unfamiliar with but will become commonplace in the months and years to come is anocracy — or semi-democracy — a form of government that is loosely defined as part democracy and part dictatorship, or as a regime that mixes democratic with autocratic features.