Home of the Brave

So, here’s the thing.  I’m getting weary of all the Nazi/Fascist/1930’s memes and posts.  I really am.  I suspect there will be some readers who have already stopped and are contemplating how to tell me that I have my head in the sand or it is my privilege to not be freaking out about the current state of affairs.  But the truth is, I’m kind of freaking out.  I am trying to calm myself so I don’t freak out, because… well, in this circumstance as well as many others in my life, large and small, freaking out has never yielded the positive, lasting return I would hope.

And that’s why I’m really over the Hitler cautionary references.  1. I’m not exactly sure what it is supposed to do other than make people freak out.  And 2. It’s pretty oblivious to the whole picture and other historic cautionary tales.

I think I’ll start with that.  I am a big believer of learning from history, both personal and the large world.  I enjoy learning about history.  A lot.  In fact, I even like to learn about injustice through the centuries.  Or we can turn that around and say I’m a fan of learning about the ordinary men and women who made the choice to stand up and fight against injustice.

But, this is a blog post.  And I’m not an academic.  I want to make this quick and hopefully not obnoxious with the articulation of things I think I’ve learned over the course of my reading and observing.  But I do want to point out a few of those things that run through my head whenever someone shares a post about 1930s Germany.  Like, it didn’t start in 1930s Germany.  It started with WWI, a bloody miserable war that pitted brethren against one another.  In the name of… being the war to end all wars?  Making the world safe for democracy?  Vindicating Belgium?  Making a shit ton of money for steel and gas manufacturers?  This paragraph won’t answer that.  But the end of the war did put the losing side in a despairing situation, without a lot of hope for financial success and a lot of promise for poverty, hunger, and desperation.  Or, seeds for resenting anyone who seemingly escaped all that.  The rise of a madman wasn’t just about hating the other.  It was about worry and a need to take the anger of frustration and starvation and limitation out on someone else.  Is that sympathy?  Does trying to understand that say I forgive the sins that were ultimately and grotesquely committed?  Um.  Hell to the no.  It just means I see that it didn’t start with the hate.  The hate started with anger.  The anger was grief of a lost war coerced into the desperation of a broken economy.  The anger became a monster.  And ultimately the monster needed a larger scarier monster to defeat it.

But keeping with the history idea.  Why are we looking to Europe for warning signs?  I mean I know we are the greatest nation in the world.  The United States of the land of the free and home of the brave has a pretty messy closet.  We built the phrase 3/5 of a man into our Constitution.  We can get into the nuances of that in a conversation – but, a person of color was legally determined 3/5 of a human being.  Women were 0.  Yup.  Women.  Half the population of this country.  They couldn’t vote for 150 years of this country’s lifetime.  How does that score in the whole democracy thing?  Or lynchings?  Or segregation?  Or the genocide of Native Americans?  What about Jim Crow?  What about McCarthyism?  What about the fact that the year we fought for independence from a monarchy, women could still be put in jail for BEING raped?  Do you know what we did to Puerto Rico in the 1930’s and much of the 20^th century?  What we are still doing to them?  What about a generation of kids who always have it in the back of their minds that school – their place of learning – is a potential terrorist zone?  Why are we so afraid of becoming Germany?  Shouldn’t we think about the fact we could become a former (not so much really) version of ourselves?

Maybe you agree with all that.  And maybe sharing or liking the Nazi alarmist meme is just a way of saying that in a way that will get people’s attention.  Okay.  You’ve got the likes and attention.  Now what?  Seriously.  When you share the outrage and fear, what do you expect to happen now?  Just leave it hanging out in the ether so your misery can have company?  Or are you going to take all that energy and do something about it?

I mean, sharing a Facebook post is something you don’t even have to leave your seat to do.  You can do it while you are obnoxiously looking at your phone sitting in the awkward silence of not having to make conversation with someone.  It’s not like you have to click out of the app and check to see when the deadline to register to vote is.  It’s not like you have to actually vote.  Isn’t telling your carefully curated social media audience more important than voting?  I mean you see the instant gratification of likes and reactions.  Voting… well what good does that do?

Because all politicians are jerks, right?  None of them care.  Have you taken the time to go to one of their coffee houses?  Or called them?  Or sent an email about an issue on which you want them to vote?  Do you donate to their campaign?  Do you help the campaign?  Do you go to town meetings?  Do you read the local newspaper to see what the selectmen or city council are discussing?  Do you go to their meetings or is it just important to make your voice heard on social media?

Well, we do have to wait for elections – and I know city/town meetings aren’t always convenient for my insane work/commute schedule.  So I won’t throw more stones from this glass house.  But what about your wallet?  You can be upset that some leaders are bought and paid for.  So are you helping to pay for it?  Do you shop at WalMart?  Do you support local businesses or opt for the quick and probably (yes it is) cheaper franchises?  Is it easier to order that thing from Amazon?  Aren’t you just saving now and paying later?

Yes, that’s all well and good, Jessie.  But there are literally Nazis marching in the street.  That is batshit scary.

Yes.  It is.  It really is.  But what good does the fear do?  I honestly want to know that.  If in your study of history, you can identify a successful outcome of escalated fear and fury, please tell me.  Let us use it as an example of what to do.  Because I don’t know about you, I feel helpless every time I read about another tweet or a  vote that happens after one of those tweets, ripping away a right or access to success.  Because they aren’t just fueling the flames of anger.  They are making people poorer and hungrier and more desperate.  They aren’t just planting those seeds of resentment.  They are providing deep trenches for them to take root.

Our history has plenty of other examples to look to.  People who were in far more oppressive situations and chose not to lie down or just shout about how crazy things were.  Ordinary heroes who don’t get holidays.  Though, some get a street named after them.  Like Melnea Cass.  Look her up.  Or Bayard Rustin.  Or Jane Addams.  Or … pretty much anyone in the American suffrage movement.  Our American Revolution had a lot of notable figures, but it was the every day farmer – or his wife that kept homesteads viable while men fought on the battlelines.  Every war has those, the ones who endured loss but believed in this country enough to survive hunger and hardship without giving in to fear.

And maybe that’s it.  We have lost faith in our country.  We can’t do that.  We can’t say we are the enemy we fought against 70 years ago.  We have survived so much more.  We have improved in spite of the horrible, despicable things we have done to our own people.  

Because while we are a land of Nazi wannabes in the streets, we are also a nation where teenagers take to the stages and go around this country to say enough is enough.  We are a nation where in every decade someone has found the voice to say we are free, but not enough.  We are imperfect but have a reserve of strength to keep trying to be a little less so.

We have to stop letting this fear undermine that faith.  Stop fueling it.  Stop letting it eat at us.  Take those little pieces of power in your vote, your wallet, your opportunity to get involved at the local level - either a committee or an office or volunteer at a school, center, etc – anywhere you can connect and share ideas that isn’t a blue screen.  Before you share that photo next time, do that instead.  It will do more good and honor this land of the free and home of the BRAVE.