TUCSON — Now they are coming for the journalists, and we won't know what happens next. If these pigs who walk on two legs prevail, before long no one will be around to write "Animal World," a non-fiction sequel to George Orwell's farmyard allegory.

Even if our overheating planet does not slough off us hapless humans like dead skin, those tempted to "speak truth to power" will have a hell of time finding safe exile in an authoritarian world.

Last week while Donald Trump was making crystal clear that he is the worst U.S. president ever, a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt went viral. The man who ended the Great Depression and led allies to beat back Nazi Germany declared:

"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."

As an old hand still able to jump out of a jeep and navigate hostile territory, I am shifting modes from Quixote to Zapata. Upcoming dispatches will shape big-picture mosaics of global challenges — and ways to confront them.

But this is drop-dead urgent. A senile, malignant narcissist president is siccing masked goons onto American streets to summarily execute good-hearted citizens, label them "domestic terrorists" and then flip a middle finger at anyone who objects.

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TUCSON — Renee Good was the last straw. The snap of that figurative camel's back echoes loudly across every part of the globe.

Democracy is on its last legs when masked goons storm peaceful streets with apparent impunity to open fire on terrified, law-abiding young mothers trying to elude them after taking their kids to school — and then a president blames the victim.

Beyond so many Americans' narrow line of sight, decent people across the world watch Donald Trump with visceral contempt. Dictators, no longer constrained by values America once defended, pop champagne corks and make plans.

Today's headlines say Donald Trump threatens 25 percent tariffs on European allies who won't give him Greenland. Americans would pay more sales sales in exchange for risking a hot war with NATO, which has kept the peace since 1949.

He has mugged a southern neighbor for its oil, allowed Russia to run roughshod in Europe, tossed fuel on Middle East flames, and he continues to chest bump China toward a global war it might win. A "free world" cannot last long like that.

For a decade, he has exploited the gullible with guile, reshaping America in his own despicable image. The Grand Old Party no longer suits its nickname. Greed-driven faithless Republicans fall in line.

Trump thumps a bible he has likely never read. His text is "Mein Kampf." A Kool-Aid cult parrots outrageous Big Lies. An old proverb explains why so many others watch in silence: "There are none so blind as they who will not see."

Fearing a Republican rout in November, he is going for broke. His bogus "insurrections" presage martial law to thwart elections. Stephen Miller, his junkyard-dog deputy chief of staff, is blunt: We're in charge so shut up. Might makes right.

Polls say just over half of Americans believe Renee Good's death was unjustified. What in hell are the rest of them thinking?

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TUCSON — And just as I was writing about hope for a better year...

Queen Elizabeth called 1992 an "annus horribilis" to describe royal family scandals and a fire at Windsor Castle. Small-bore stuff compared to 2025, when those words sounded like a Latin translation that sums up Donald Trump. A horrid anus.

The man's preposterous buffoonery at times deserves a good laugh, my draft began. Descending toward his level of discourse only plays into his grasping small hands, further inciting his cultists. We need to look up.

Then I woke up to big, bold type in the New York Times, what old-time editors call a war head: U.S. CAPTURES MADURO, TRUMP SAYS. Terrific. Back to the Colossus of the North days when the United States was roundly despised. But worse.

Trump made no bones about his purpose: "There is a lot of oil in Venezuela, and we need it for ourselves and the world," he said. Basically, it was a midnight gas station stickup writ large.

He said nothing about democracy or improving people's lives. He dismissed opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize he covets. as incapable and too unpopular to be president.

Venezuela declared independence from Spain in 1811 and fought its own revolutionary war. Now Trump says he will "run" the country, harking back to Hitler who remotely "ran" Poland, then most of Europe.

The country's 29 million people include diehard "Chavista" loyalists in city slums, eager for vengeance. Vicious cartels and criminal gangs based in mountainous jungle await to fight back.

When George W. Bush invaded Iraq, Colin Powell warned, "You break it, you own it." He was a battle-hardened general who revered the Constitution. Pete Hegseth is a toy-soldier loose cannon, whose motto is FAFO. Fuck around and find out.

Trump says big U.S. companies will exploit Venezuela's oilfields. That means American engineers and workaday "oilies" in remote places would be vulnerable to kidnap as hostages or terrorist attacks. What could go wrong?

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TUCSON — I've stayed silent on what I know about that spine-chilling Associated Press photo of 9-year-old Kim Phuc running in pain and panic with two little brothers from napalm flaring behind them 53 years ago down a road in Vietnam.

It is time for some clarity.

That single image portrays why war is hell in a way no words can. Yet today as countless Kim Phucs suffer worse in much of the world, trust is fast diminishing in all "journalists," even those who risk their own lives to get their stories straight.

"The Stringer," a new documentary on Netflix, provides exhaustive forensics and emotional corroborating testimony to make a case that Nguyen Thanh Nghe, another Vietnamese photographer, took the picture for so long attributed to Nick Ut.

Accurate credit is important for history and the photographers involved. What matters far more is what AP labeled the photo: "The Terror of War."

Heated public comment, much of it by people who have not seen the film, illustrates the damage of today's open mic mediascape. When anyone with a keyboard or a microphone can chime in, truth is a moving target.

This is what I know — and what I don't. I have no case to make, one way or the other. June 8, 1972, was long ago. But one crucial moment is burned indelibly into my memory.

Horst Faas emerged from the AP photo section in Saigon to show bureau chief Richard Pyle and me, then alone in the newsroom, the negative he had selected from pictures that Ut and others had taken in Trang Bang.

We both said AP would not show frontal nudity. He shook his head, then messaged the photo chief in New York, who agreed the picture was too powerful to ignore. It went to newspapers around the world before I saw anyone else come into the bureau.

Controversy rages over which photographer was where on Route 1. For me, truth comes down to a single question. Did Faas purposely attribute someone else's picture to Nick Ut? For complex reasons, I believe he probably did.

Horst was a German photomeister for whom the word, legendary, falls short. I loved the guy, but not blindly. Only Nick knows who took that photo. The Pulitzer is still his. The World Press Photo award is in limbo. AP stands by Nick but admits some doubt.

Those who take journalism seriously need to consider hard facts with open minds.

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