PARIS — After months in a Barbie-bedazzled America heedless of Oppenheimer’s dark warnings, approaching elections terrify me. I’ve covered Trump-type despots who con their way to power since the 1960s. Almost invariably, they do what they say they will, then follow with worse.

Nations that learn the hard way why history matters share what the French call a longue mémoire. Too many Americans with the attention span of fruit flies on fentanyl may soon dump a remarkably effective president to bring back a monster.

I heard an MSNBC anchor tell a panel, with an amused laugh, “Yes, we don’t want to relitigate Covid.” Why not?

Ukraine and Gaza wars sparked by Donald Trump’s folly have taken 60,000 lives. His depraved disregard for a deadly virus killed well over 10 times that many in America alone. It caused the soaring inflation and global bedlam that so many people blame on Joe Biden.

As if insurrection, purloining state secrets, election tampering, fraud and sexual assault were not enough, that is a clearcut crime against humanity. Americans ignore at their peril his favorite catchphrase: “blood bath.”

A brash outsider had a reasonable appeal in 2016 to Americans eager for change. Today, he aims to replace democracy with demagogy. Eight billion people share a fragile lifeboat; he is chopping holes in the hull. November 5 will amount to a national referendumb.

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NEW YORK — One World Trade Center gleams above the Manhattan skyline on the footprint of the twin towers a handful of Islamist zealots brought down with a sucker punch. The mast atop it reaches to 1,776 feet, symbolizing a year that matters far more than 2001.

Jeffrey Fagan, a world-savvy criminologist, took me through the warren of streets he was driving past when those planes struck. He had seen rescue crews brave the inferno as terrified people leapt to their death. In all, 3,000 died. Yet the lesson of that day went unlearned.

A stricken nation obsessed over that question — why do they hate us? In fact, few did. But blind fury set the world ablaze. Today, lots of people hate America. And opposing factions at home hate each other. As Fagan says, too many Americans twist facts into their own preferred biases.

Voters need the “mainstream media” to provide firsthand reporting and informed comment so 1776 continues to signify more than what history will recall as the starting point of a once-noble democratic endeavor that ended in 2025.

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ARIVACA, Arizona — On party days when banjos and stirring voices spill out from La Gitana Cantina and Café, talk of the nearby Mexican border is mostly muted. This funky little settlement smacks of a ranchland redoubt of old souls and new-age spirits.

In Avdiivka on the collapsing Ukrainian front, the soundtrack is booming artillery. Russians knifed through town to advance on farms and villages against heavily outgunned dispirited defenders who plead for more ammunition.

The two towns, 6,500 miles apart, seem to be in different galaxies. But they’re not.

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TUCSON — Winnie-the-Pooh, a whimsical little storybook bear, once made sense: “If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”

But when concrete blocks too many ears, it’s time to heed Chicken Little. That old tale taught kids not to fret over small stuff, like the hen bonked on the head by an acorn who yelled “The sky is falling!” Look around today. The sky is falling.

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TUCSON — In an old Buddhist parable, blind men describe an elephant. Whatever one touches — tusk, trunk, leathery hide — defines it. That is no challenge with the Trump-corrupted Republican Party version. Just lift up the tail.

Britons learned the hard way with Brexit the costs of a hasty decision by ill-informed voters. Great Britain is now simply a Britain fraught with troubles, and there is no going back. Imagine the incalculable impact of an Amerexit.

If November elections go badly, the United States will likely be an ex-democracy mired in pachyderm plop, too self-absorbed and mean-spirited to help turn down the heat in an increasingly bellicose and autocratic world.

In a book titled “The Bill of Obligations,” seasoned statesman Richard Haass lists 10 requisites for citizens in a free society. The first says it all: “Be Informed.” That is no easy task in a nation befuddled by lies and lunacy that spread at the speed of light.

This is a hard look at what is going on beyond the oceans that insulate America from a reporter who has watched the world fall on its axis since the 1960s.

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