The History of this Blog
And here is the long version of this history:
I set out in the spring of 2025 to revisit the United States which I had left in 1995 after having worked there for six years as the Washington-Correspondent for German newspapers.
Curious to find out what had happened to America over the span of a generation I drove for six weeks from Washington, D.C to Atlanta, Georgia, through the American heartland where two out of three had voted for President Trump.
I had left the United States when “Forrest Gump” had won the Academy Awards, Jeff Bezoz founded Amazon, O.J. Simpson was on trial, and soon after the Republicans had gained the majority in both chambers of Congress, the first time in 40 years.
And I returned to America when “Oppenheimer” had won the Academy Awards, after Black Lives Matter had become history, after Jeff Bezos had joined other tech-oligarchs at the 2nd inauguration of Donald Trump, and when Congress was now unsafely in the hands of a radicalized Republican Party.
Still, I was torn again between admiration and disbelief about what I encountered as I had been 30-plus years earlier. The people I met were still as friendly and gracious to the observing visitor as they had been. But they were also more sceptical or even suspicious, either apologetic or disenchanted, consumed by their grievances and riven with rivalry and fear. Still proud Americans but afraid of being caught in a downward spiral in comparison to others and to the past.
After the blogposts from my journey, I have tried to make sense of what I saw and commented of what I have been reading since then. I have also noticed that writing about the America of Donald Trump a certain European smugness can set in. When progressive Americans today ruefully quote Sinclair Lewis dictum “It can’t happen here” we Europeans or Germans shouldn’t be so sure, either.
That is why I have extended my blogging to other foreign countries which I have covered as a journalist or where I have worked in so-called “development” - and where local autocrats have been using the same kind of contaminated and violent language, we now are shocked to find in the allegedly more developed “West”.
I hope you keep following my now renamed blog, enjoy reading and - if so - recommend the free subscription to your friends.