For Americans, it all began with Trump’s lies of winning the last election. He walks free and continues to defame democracy. He supports Putin; need I say more.

Inflation is on the rise and will starve those living marginally.

President Zelensky is a hero as he fights to save Ukraine. Even if he wins, his motherland has been destroyed and millions of his countrymen have been forced to flee.

History has seen these despots before and will again. Free speech is being lost and otherwise decent political candidates shot down by false rhetoric.

There will be no more talk of climate change when autocrats rule and democracies are lost.

Free speech will be a joke and no one will be laughing in the face of killers.

The only place we can win the war is in our hearts.

Make sure you make room in yours for the truth. For it is the truth that will set you free.

We must now be caretakers of the truth; we must honor it above all else as we watch autocrats spit on it and revile it.

This is no time for pleasantries; it is a time for seeing clearly that autocrats are killers.

Long live Ukraine, whose citizens may be facing their last stand.

Vicki Woodyard