Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Sunday, November 8, 2020
Saturday, November 7, 2020
Thoughts on the Recent Election
It shouldn’t have been this close.
After four years of open corruption – of influence peddling, of quid-pro-quo, of racketeering, of intimidation, of repeated violations of the Hatch Act, of turning the White House into a campaign headquarters and the Secret Service into a money-maker for his hotels, of enough financial crimes to fill a prison – it shouldn’t have been this close.
After four years of callous, wanton cruelty – of ripping apart families, of kids in cages, of threats to shoot asylum seekers in the knees, of teargassing American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights, of accepting Russian bounties on American soldiers, of denying the existence of a plague that has killed nearly a quarter million Americans, actively spreading that plague with campaign rallies, and aggressively suppressing any effort to deal with that plague in a responsible adult fashion – it shouldn’t have been this close.
After four years of blistering incompetence and calculated destruction – of not knowing how the Constitution works, of systematically destroying alliances created and maintained by the blood and sweat of better men and women, of alienating allies and coddling dictators, of bankrupting the country to give more to the already obscenely wealthy, of working feverishly to take away health insurance from millions of Americans during an actual plague, of sabotaging the Post Office, of gutting environmental laws – it shouldn’t have been this close.
After four years of increasingly overt Fascism – subverting the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution, claiming dictatorial authority, sending mercenary stormtroopers against peaceful protesters, hiding in bunkers, supporting brutality and extrajudicial murder, encouraging violence from paramilitary supporters, threatening election workers, putting unnecessary and hyperpartisan obstacles in the path of voters, and delegitimizing democracy itself – it shouldn’t have been this close.
We as Americans should have rejected this tin pot dictator overwhelmingly.
And yet here we are. Over seventy million Americans went out of their way to declare their support for this corrupt, callous Fascist.
The fact that Donald Trump received ANY support whatsoever is a damning indictment of American morality and one of the greatest failures in American political history.
I read somewhere that in many ways the neo-Nazis are worse than the Nazis. That people could have joined the Nazis for all sorts of reasons, not knowing how it would turn out – even though the Nazis were very clear about how it would turn out, and even if in the long run their motives for joining didn’t matter. As one historian has so aptly said, there’s a word for people who joined the Nazis for economic motives, or because they hated the other side, or their friends joined, or whatever, and that word is “Nazi” – nobody cares about their reasons anymore. But it was possible in 1930 or 1933 to join the NSDAP and still not know what was coming down the pike. Neo-Nazis, however, have the example of three quarters of a century of history. These are the people who looked at the Holocaust, who looked at the devastation of World War II, and then said, “Yep, we need more of that.”
It might have been possible to ignore the fact that Trump was a raving lunatic in 2016. That he openly campaigned on a platform of war crimes and authoritarianism. That he was endorsed by every major neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization in America as the candidate who shared their values and agenda. Maybe someone just hated Hillary Clinton. Maybe they were blinded by the party label and thought he was just another Republican.
But not in 2020.
In 2020 it should have been clear. Yet over seventy million Americans looked at the open corruption, the callous, wanton cruelty, the blistering incompetence and calculated destruction, and the increasingly overt Fascism, and said “Yep, we need more of that.”
I grieve for my country.
But for the majority of Americans it was clear, and we rejected Trump and all he stands for. Never forget that for all the gerrymandering that the electoral college introduces to the presidential election, for all that it came down to a few thousand voters in a handful of states, that Trump lost this election by over four million votes – that he and his views have never, not once in the last five years, ever commanded the support of the majority of the American population or the American electorate.
The fact that over seventy-four million Americans went out of their way to repudiate him in the middle of a plague and in the face of his threats and bluster is a hopeful sign. It means that possibly the tide of Trumpian Fascism is ebbing and perhaps – perhaps – we can resume our rightful place among the nations of the world as a normal country. It will not be easy to erase the stain of the last four years. This electoral victory is the first step, not the last, and the hard part has yet to begin. But at least now we can start.
I will breathe easier today, knowing that there is a deadline for this administration and that in January there will be a president who will seek to advance the interests of the whole nation rather than those of just his personal cult and who will reject the corruption, cruelty, destruction and Fascism of the current occupant of the Oval Office.
I will celebrate the victory of a decent candidate over this moral black hole of a president.
But I will not relax.
It shouldn’t have been this close.
And the fact that it was means that there is work for American patriots to do.
After four years of open corruption – of influence peddling, of quid-pro-quo, of racketeering, of intimidation, of repeated violations of the Hatch Act, of turning the White House into a campaign headquarters and the Secret Service into a money-maker for his hotels, of enough financial crimes to fill a prison – it shouldn’t have been this close.
After four years of callous, wanton cruelty – of ripping apart families, of kids in cages, of threats to shoot asylum seekers in the knees, of teargassing American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights, of accepting Russian bounties on American soldiers, of denying the existence of a plague that has killed nearly a quarter million Americans, actively spreading that plague with campaign rallies, and aggressively suppressing any effort to deal with that plague in a responsible adult fashion – it shouldn’t have been this close.
After four years of blistering incompetence and calculated destruction – of not knowing how the Constitution works, of systematically destroying alliances created and maintained by the blood and sweat of better men and women, of alienating allies and coddling dictators, of bankrupting the country to give more to the already obscenely wealthy, of working feverishly to take away health insurance from millions of Americans during an actual plague, of sabotaging the Post Office, of gutting environmental laws – it shouldn’t have been this close.
After four years of increasingly overt Fascism – subverting the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution, claiming dictatorial authority, sending mercenary stormtroopers against peaceful protesters, hiding in bunkers, supporting brutality and extrajudicial murder, encouraging violence from paramilitary supporters, threatening election workers, putting unnecessary and hyperpartisan obstacles in the path of voters, and delegitimizing democracy itself – it shouldn’t have been this close.
We as Americans should have rejected this tin pot dictator overwhelmingly.
And yet here we are. Over seventy million Americans went out of their way to declare their support for this corrupt, callous Fascist.
The fact that Donald Trump received ANY support whatsoever is a damning indictment of American morality and one of the greatest failures in American political history.
I read somewhere that in many ways the neo-Nazis are worse than the Nazis. That people could have joined the Nazis for all sorts of reasons, not knowing how it would turn out – even though the Nazis were very clear about how it would turn out, and even if in the long run their motives for joining didn’t matter. As one historian has so aptly said, there’s a word for people who joined the Nazis for economic motives, or because they hated the other side, or their friends joined, or whatever, and that word is “Nazi” – nobody cares about their reasons anymore. But it was possible in 1930 or 1933 to join the NSDAP and still not know what was coming down the pike. Neo-Nazis, however, have the example of three quarters of a century of history. These are the people who looked at the Holocaust, who looked at the devastation of World War II, and then said, “Yep, we need more of that.”
It might have been possible to ignore the fact that Trump was a raving lunatic in 2016. That he openly campaigned on a platform of war crimes and authoritarianism. That he was endorsed by every major neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization in America as the candidate who shared their values and agenda. Maybe someone just hated Hillary Clinton. Maybe they were blinded by the party label and thought he was just another Republican.
But not in 2020.
In 2020 it should have been clear. Yet over seventy million Americans looked at the open corruption, the callous, wanton cruelty, the blistering incompetence and calculated destruction, and the increasingly overt Fascism, and said “Yep, we need more of that.”
I grieve for my country.
But for the majority of Americans it was clear, and we rejected Trump and all he stands for. Never forget that for all the gerrymandering that the electoral college introduces to the presidential election, for all that it came down to a few thousand voters in a handful of states, that Trump lost this election by over four million votes – that he and his views have never, not once in the last five years, ever commanded the support of the majority of the American population or the American electorate.
The fact that over seventy-four million Americans went out of their way to repudiate him in the middle of a plague and in the face of his threats and bluster is a hopeful sign. It means that possibly the tide of Trumpian Fascism is ebbing and perhaps – perhaps – we can resume our rightful place among the nations of the world as a normal country. It will not be easy to erase the stain of the last four years. This electoral victory is the first step, not the last, and the hard part has yet to begin. But at least now we can start.
I will breathe easier today, knowing that there is a deadline for this administration and that in January there will be a president who will seek to advance the interests of the whole nation rather than those of just his personal cult and who will reject the corruption, cruelty, destruction and Fascism of the current occupant of the Oval Office.
I will celebrate the victory of a decent candidate over this moral black hole of a president.
But I will not relax.
It shouldn’t have been this close.
And the fact that it was means that there is work for American patriots to do.
Saturday, October 31, 2020
A Birthday in October
As of today I have no more minor children.
Lauren is now legally an adult, which would perhaps be a daunting thought except for the fact that she has amply proven that she can handle responsibility and take care of herself just fine.
When you become a parent you sign up for the long haul. Long days. Long nights. Long years. But you do that because you know in the end it will be worthwhile and that there will be these new people to make the world better as they make their own lives.
And then they become adults, and there it is. New challenges. New tasks. Out they go into the world and all you can do is wish them well, love them utterly, and be there for them when they need you.
They never stop being your children, though, not really.
And they never stop being worthwhile.
Happy birthday, Lauren.
I’m proud of you.
Lauren is now legally an adult, which would perhaps be a daunting thought except for the fact that she has amply proven that she can handle responsibility and take care of herself just fine.
When you become a parent you sign up for the long haul. Long days. Long nights. Long years. But you do that because you know in the end it will be worthwhile and that there will be these new people to make the world better as they make their own lives.
And then they become adults, and there it is. New challenges. New tasks. Out they go into the world and all you can do is wish them well, love them utterly, and be there for them when they need you.
They never stop being your children, though, not really.
And they never stop being worthwhile.
Happy birthday, Lauren.
I’m proud of you.
Thursday, October 29, 2020
A Lesson from the Past
One of the things about genealogy is that you discover stories about your ancestors that you didn’t know before, which is kind of the point.
A surprisingly large number of my family members served in World War II, for example.
A surprisingly large number of my family members served in World War II, for example.
My grandfather is the guy in the front row on the far left in this photo. Twenty-nine years old and married with two kids under two years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed, he spent the war as a machinist instructor in the Philadelphia Navy Yard in the naval aviation section, where he’d been working for nearly a decade. He told me once that everybody at the Yard knew we were going to get involved in that war months before we actually did. In June 1941, six months before Pearl Harbor, his superiors ordered him to start training women to work in the machine shop, “which was ridiculous, at the time, women in the machine shop” he said. But his bosses knew that millions of men would be drafted into the army soon and labor would be scarce and so, then, did he. They also told him to stop trying to enlist for military service since he was more valuable to the war effort where he was, which was a great relief to my grandmother.
That’s my great-uncle John – my grandmother’s brother – on the left there, in Paris sometime in 1945 after the Germans had been driven out. The war was still going on when this photo was taken, but the front lines had moved on by then. He actually spent another decade or so in the army after the war and retired as a Lt. Colonel.
This was my grandfather’s nephew Anthony.
This is Anthony’s brother Lou. If I remember correctly it was Lou who was in some way tangentially involved with the liberation of at least one concentration camp in Europe, an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life.
The groom here is my grandmother’s nephew John, the son of my great-great-aunt Nelly.
And this is Orlando, who married my mother’s cousin Annie.
They all served. They all did their part in the great struggle against Fascism that defined the middle of the 20th century, the largest and bloodiest war in human history. Some of them were awarded medals by the United States of America for doing so.
They sacrificed, they worked, and they suffered in order to see Fascism destroyed.
That Fascism has risen again despite their efforts – that it has risen here in the United States, in fact – is a tragedy. There are actual Fascists running the American government today, and the fact that they have any support whatsoever is one of the greatest moral failures in American history.
My family served in the struggle against Fascism in World War II.
I will not disgrace their memory by supporting it here in 2020.
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