I don’t know many Germans well, as I have only two actual friends: a husband and wife who live in Nuremberg with their three children.

Yes, I have shaken the hands of other Germans during two visits there, one in 2016 with my bride, Kathy Anne, and the other in 2024. When the subject of Donald Trump comes up, they all sing off the same page: They tell me that the onset of authoritarian rule comes in dribs and drabs, that the individual who seeks power gathers it up in bite-sized pieces. Before long — presto! — he’s acquired all the power he needs to affect serious change in the country he seeks to lead.

My friends tell me that is what they are witnessing in this country. Yes, it’s from some distance away. However, my friends are both well-educated, well-versed in government and public policy and know a dictator-in-waiting when they see him.

Many observers in Europe are wondering the same thing as well. Why are we Americans allowing this to happen?

I also have made friends in countries affected directly by Adolf Hitler’s megalomaniacism. Several live in The Netherlands, a few more live in Greece and I have shaken hands with a couple of Danes in Copenhagen and some Brits in the UK. They understand what can happen when a madman takes control of the levers of power.

I am going to cling to my faith that Americans will never tolerate what so many around the world suggest is happening here. It is all outrageous, enraging, despicable and poses an existential threat to the principles upon which the founders created what would become the world’s indispensable nation.

Yes, I have referred to Trump as a madman. I do not believe he is capable of committing the level of genocide we saw in the 1930s and ’40s. The rest of it? I’ll need to wait for him to be vanquished.