TRAVERSE CITY — I was asked the other day why I’ve been writing about Trump so much lately. That’s an easy one. I write so much about Trump because what he’s trying to do is rebuild the nation in his own ugly image. He wants an America where non-whites are second class citizens, where women know their place, where LGBTQ people hide in closets, where the rich rule and everyone else is ruled, where poor women with unwanted pregnancies resort to coat hangers while wealthy women get proper medical care, where wars are endless because they feed the military industrial complex, where people of color are always suspect in the eyes of the police and the courts, where the planet is nothing more than a resource to be plundered, where science is just somebody’s opinion, where facts don’t matter, where the truth is what he says it is, where colleges and universities are not institutions of higher learning but breeding grounds for liberalism, where a free press is supposed to be compliant, obedient, do the king’s bidding and not document any of the aforementioned, and where we’re all supposed to believe Putin is a great man and our own intelligence agencies are filled with traitors. I can’t do that. I can’t be like the German people in Nazi Germany who knew what was going on but did nothing to stop it. I won’t be complicit by my silence. I don’t agree with Trump’s vision for America, not one bit, and if it comes to pass, it’s not a place I want to live. Those are some of the reasons I’ve been writing so much about Trump. But the biggest reason is this: I think he’s close to succeeding. Very close. That may not scare you but it does me. So, I’ll keep writing because this is the issue of my lifetime. I won’t “keep quiet.” I refuse to go along to get along. Because that’s what he wants everybody like me to do.

– He’s sure to be acquitted by the Senate, assuming the House’s backbone doesn’t quiver on them – these are Democrats, after all. They’re not known for sturdiness of spine. That won’t mean impeachment wasn’t worth it. The way I see it, we are all called to do the right thing in life, politicians included. If House Democrats had heeded Nancy Pelosi’s initial “strategy” to not pursue impeachment, they’d have been accessories after the fact to the destruction of democracy.

– Time’s “Person of the Year” is teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg. Great. She deserves it. Bonus: It’ll drive Trump crazy. She deserves another award just for that.

– “They” is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year, as in “You know what they say.” I think they truly deserve it. They are very powerful. Some people think they are full of it. But what do they know?

– Am I the only one suspicious that suddenly all the stories in the media about the Detroit Tigers are about how the team is suddenly and inexplicably done with the tear-down phase of its “rebuild” (quotation marks to indicate my sarcasm of the term when it’s clear they’re still cutting costs prior to selling the team) and now they’re looking to add better players? I smell a PR plan to mollify pissed-off fans, not an actual change in the team’s approach. Media should be extremely challenging of this sudden change of heart. Will they be?

– Stubhub says 2019’s top-selling tour artists are … (wait for it) Elton John, Rolling Stones and Queen. In other words, the acts of my youth. Hey, kids, I TOLD you our stuff was better.

– Yeah, yeah, I know: “Whatever, boomer.” That suddenly popular millennial dig on Baby Boomers doesn’t bother me because millennials have endured much more and worse from my generation. A more unfairly maligned generation, I cannot think of.

– “Nothing is the end of the world except for the end of the world.” – Obscure play title.

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Andrew Heller, an award-winning newspaper columnist, appears weekly in the Daily Press. He graduated from Escanaba Area High School in 1979. Follow him at andrewheller.com and on Facebook and Twitter. Write to him at andrewhellercolumn@gmail.com.