LETTER: 'Tough Time to be a Thinking Person'

{The views expressed below are those of the author, not necessarily those of Franklin Observer]

Letter to the Editor:
Date: November 12, 2025
Re: This Is a Tough Time to Be a Thinking Person
From: James C. Johnston Jr.
Did you ever think that you would be living in such a time as this? It seems as if the government of this country is doing everything in its power to pull itself apart and make itself totally dysfunctional. If an enemy of this great nation could hire people to do this “awful thing of destruction” of our government from within, it could not be more effectively destructive than what is happening to us now. Government agencies are pared back to the bone. Plans are afoot to cut medical assistance to a huge part of our population so that the richest people in our nation can have a substantial tax break. The leader of our nation has decided to rip off an entire wing of the historic structure that has served as the home of “The First Family” for the past 225 years for some gaudy ballroom.
Nobody was consulted when plans were advanced to add a huge and vulgar paste-on ballroom of over ninety-thousand square feet which is almost twice the size of the elegant Federal Structure known as The White House. The equally elegant and famous Rose Garden is already but a fond memory. The area is now covered with concrete so that women wearing stiletto-heeled-shoes can walk the area without getting their heels caught in between the paving stones according to the Chief Executive!
We also have masked thugs roaming our streets throwing our citizens to the ground, because they are guilty of being of brown skin. These unfortunate citizens are dragged off into custody and frequently shipped off to “somewhere unknown” where their nearest and dearest will never find them. Their children are either abandoned or hustled off into custody.
Have we suddenly been transported off to some weird place as depicted in the movie RED DAWN? And why do so many “Leaders” want our history white-washed? Slavery, which was the great reality of more than half of our history from 1619 to 1865, is to be studied no more in places like Florida! Is this still America? Try flying somewhere abroad and see how much fun that is. If you have non-Caucasian friends as I do, you will find that they are disinclined to fly to the United States to visit you even if it is their custom to do so at Christmas and on your birthday. I have very few of these holidays left to me as it is and I miss not seeing them.
By the way, do you know measles is making a great come-back? Do you know that Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. thinks that letting nature take its course is better than using vaccines to head-off medical threats to the greater population like measles? Do you know that we have the richest and least competent Presidential Cabinet in our history heading up the departments of our Federal government? Do you know people are starving in our country, the richest nation on earth, so that their children can eat?
As an historian, I cannot begin to enumerate the horrors of living in this America today. Yet people seem to just wander through the days of their lives purposely not listening to the news or wanting to know anything about the reality of this Brave New World they are now living in. We are sliding into Fascism with ever increasing velocity which seems only mildly interesting to some.
One of our great political parties, the party of Lincoln, which has proudly existed since 1854, when it was founded by John C. Fremont, William Seward, and others upset with the evils of slavery and the anti-democratic nature of political life in these United States, has all but disappeared into a strange cult of personality of a slick New York Relator, and former T.V. personality which has totally subsumed it. Great men like John McCain would not recognize the place he made his Grand Old Party, his former political home, for most of his active political life.
It is all just so sad, and the huge question comes, “Can we save ourselves and our nation from the strange and bizarrely evil forces who have captured it?” The Justice Department has become a private law firm of the Chief Executive carrying out his wishes and commands to indict and punish his political enemies. The Attorney General is pointedly rude and contemptuous of the Senate of the United States. The head of the F.B.I. uses government aircraft to follow his girlfriend around the country as she performs in rock concerts after criticizing his predecessors for similar activities either rightfully or wrongly. Facts do not seem to mean much to our present Federal Administration, but considering the documented tens of thousands of lies told by them, should we be surprised?
New verbs have entered our national lexicon like “to Disappear Someone” meaning to scoop somebody off the street or as they exit a court-room and whisk them away to some far-off land or jungle prison in the Deep South of the Good Old U. S. of A. not to be seen again. Is this still America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave? I guess that after the elections of 2026 we’ll find out. These are not ordinary times. I fight to maintain hope and trust in our democratic institutions, but now in my eighty-second year of life, I am not as sure, yet I still hope. I am glad that I live in Massachusetts where Freedom first raised her head at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775. This is a special place, and it is my hope that I will live to see our historic freedoms restored and vouchsafed for generations yet unborn.
Yours truly,
James C. Johnston Jr.