In my almost 80 years of life, yesterday takes the cake, I think. [View all]

[MineralMan]

I've been around for just a few months short of 80 years. So, I have lots of events I can look to from the past when an evenT strikes me as a big deal. Clearly the second inauguration of Donald J. Trump is such an event. No question about it. But how big is it?

In my opinion, it exceeds the impact of the string of political assassinations in this country in the 1960s. And those, beginning with JFK in 1963, were life-changing.

Landing on the moon was a big deal, too, but its impact was more of a slow transition to a more technological world than an instant life-changer.

I was only a week old when the USA dropped a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima. That was a huge thing, but I didn't recognize it as such at the time. That took years to hit me.

There was the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. I watched that unfold in CNN that day, from the moment the first video of the first plane popped onto the screen. Another huge deal, but not as impactful as that Hiroshima bomb. Still, it changed things here in the USA.

And now we have Trump's second inauguration. Its impact is still developing, of course, but its promise is more frightening to me than any of the other things I thought of as huge events. Will American democracy disappear into tyranny and chaos? I think it could. So, I'm going to put yesterday at the top of my list. I don't know whether I'll live to see the final result of it, but many people I know and care about are going to.

I'm worried. Very worried.