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| With Andy in the WH Press Room, 2016 |
THEN/NOW
It isn't really "unthinkable" any more is it? After all, by November of 2016 Obama was looking at his last few months, and Trump had already been elected President. Looking back, it seems like a time long, long ago. Andy was with the White House Fellows Program then, and I was on my first trip since Ken––well, you know. Other family members had met Obama in the Oval several weeks before, and now here I was on my own tour. Besides the special WH tour––where the only Obama family member I ran into was their dog––Andy took me to the places where members of the government dine and hang out. As it happened, his apartment was across the street from the site of the Pizzagate incident of a few months earlier: a conspiracy theorist had bought the notion that Democrats were running a pedofile ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant, so he went there with a gun and opened fire. Now that was a sign of things to come.
So–basically a carefree visit to DC, admittedly with misgivings about the incoming administration. That, I thought, would wear itself out.
Obviously, it didn't. It's back with a vengeance, as they say.
*
So here we are, again. But this time there is a plan, essentially Project 25, with its credo to turn the government upside down, eliminate as much of it as possible, a plan dismissed by many pre-election because it was too out there. It is indeed out here now for everyone to see, or to experience if you're unlucky enought to be one of its numerous targets. Its base nature is one of cruelty. No worries, rich white men. You're good.
So far the courts are holding off a multitude of executive moves, others are stubbornly holding on to their jobs or to their missions. But a mass movement has yet to coalesce. It's early days though, a thousand-plus to go. Which is not to say that after those thousand and so days all will be well. Much will be in ruins.
WHAT TO DO
A protest in Lexington where I lived in until 2011. April 19th, Patriots Day, was a big deal, beginning in the early morning hours with a reenactment of the Battle on the Green and Paul Revere's and William Dawes famous ride. Oh, patriotism!
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| Family members (some visiting from MA) joined a small local protest. |
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| An anxious audience, mostly white-haired, hears from VT leaders. (Some faces blurred) |
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| Our VT leaders: All good people here. Absent: Our Gov. |
Little actions. Feels like punching the air.
READING UP
In the absence of finding a way of doing something, taking some sort of useful action, I find myself with the following spate of interests. Besides becoming an obsessive reader of Heather Cox Richardson's daily newsletter in which she describes happenings in a historical context, and doing deeps reads of a bunch of trusted publications, I find myself most invested in stories that relate, often via fiction, to the present. Latest is Darkenbloom by German author Eva Menasse (in translation), that tells a wonderfully ironic tale of people in an Austrian border town in the last 1980's whose residents have not come to terms with their past, to say the least. It is a tale based upon actual events. Then there is the dystopian Prophet Song by Irish writer Paul Lynch, and The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, reminding us that the Dutch were not all innocent. A while back I picked up Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada at the airport, a surprising find for an airport bookstore, and another true story. And I am about to read The Crooked Cross by Sally Carson, which sounds as if it might be a gothic American novel but is actually an almost-forgotten 1934 novel about the dawn of the Nazi era in a small German town.
Why this can-it-happen-here thinking? For one, they are all darn good stories. Those stories and the present have commonalities. And I have a certain perspective, I suppose, since my parents were Austrian and German and long ago I met relatives and friends of my parents in both countries when memories were still fresh. Then there is the tale"The Adventures of My Cousin George," my story (i.e., blog post) about his experiences during the war and eventual flight to Australia in its aftermath.
WHAT NEXT
I read somewhere recently that one thing leaders fear––the writer was speaking of autocratic leaders, but this probably applies more widely––is events.
I don't know what is next. Do you?
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| The last scene from "Planet of the Apes," 1968 |
