On Monday, my wife and I went to our local cinema to watch A Complete Unknown, not only to see Timothée Chalamet’s stunning re-creation of a young Bob Dylan but also to avoid the wall-to-wall televised coverage of Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony. Set in the early 1960s, the film reminded us of how Dylan ignited and spoke for the interests of young people, starting out with simple folk songs of hope and aspiration, swiftly followed by angry snarls of rage exacerbated by the assassinations of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
With Trump once again ensconced in the White House, promising/threatening a multitude of actions, now is surely the time for a new Dylan to appear – hopefully someone who can galvanise and electrify a new generation and then inspire and support a viable new Democrat leader who can first provide opposition to any Trump excesses and then fight to ensure that his like never succeeds again (Trump sworn in as 47th president as US braces for a new era of disruption and division, 20 January).
Toby Wood
Peterborough
• The US has inaugurated a president who has been charged with multiple crimes and is unfit in every respect to hold public office. The UK prime minister has warmly congratulated him with the hope of renewing the US/UK special relationship and working together to defend the world from tyranny. It is unsurprising that the worst of British public life have flocked to this event (Zoe Williams, 20 January). Trump can be judged by the company he keeps, as can those who fawn over him. They are birds of a feather.
Patrick Owen
Pantydwr, Powys
• Renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America is an obvious step in the right direction, but why stop there? It should be the Trump Gulf, the westernmost part of the Trumplantic Ocean. And there’s lots more to see in the US of A, or T: the Trump Canyon, the Statue of Trumpety, the Trumpy Mountains, the Trumpissippi Delta. I can’t wait.
Cris Yelland
Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham
• Will the recently introduced US policy of repatriation of all illegal immigrants include those who arrived long ago such that we can expect all land to be returned to Native American tribes? While climate change is denied, will the new policies include rewilding of the midwestern plains and reintroducing vast herds of buffalo?
John Blake
Pimperne, Dorset
• Edward Docx draws some fascinating parallels between the second coming of Trump and ogre mythology (Fee, fi, fo…Trump: how an ogre won back the White House, 20 January), but WH Auden managed, in his poem August 1968, to predict his inauguration speech as well: “The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, / While drivel gushes from his lips.”
Ian Cunningham
Budleigh Salterton, Devon
• WB Yeats: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Richard Barnard
Wivenhoe, Essex
• As President Trump is set on destroying the world to make America great again, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless about all the things he’ll do to achieve this. But we all have power. Stop buying the US’s exports, including its media products, and stop going there.
John Beer
Farnham, Surrey
• Great photo on page 3 of Tuesday’s paper of the Donald failing to land a kiss on his lovely wife. Now we know what the hat was for (Brimful of menace? Melania strikes sombre note at Trump inauguration, 20 January).
Jane Barrett
Buxton, Derbyshire
• Those undecided about accepting atheism will find their decision much easier after reading of Donald Trump saying: “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Charles Jeffrey
South Petherton, Somerset
• Did God really know what he was doing?
Helen Keating
Gatehouse of Fleet, Dumfries and Galloway
• Shouldn’t Donald Trump have said: “I was saved by God to make America burn again”?
Rae Street
Littleborough, Greater Manchester
• I wonder if Donald Trump’s “golden age” will be as elusive as Boris Johnson’s “sunlit uplands”.
Pete Lavender
Woodthorpe, Nottinghamshire
• All things considered, Donald Trump showed unusual restraint in not making Monday’s inauguration a pay-per-view event.
Tom Stubbs
Surbiton, London
• Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
