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Sheltering Walls

Bare Trees in Fog

A Tale of Two Senators

Picture this: It is almost midnight on a Thursday night. A woman is seated in her spotless kitchen without a hair out of place wearing a teal silk blouse and a gold cross around her neck. Her two children are presumably asleep in their bedrooms. She is a working mother, and every working mother knows about burning the midnight oil. In spite of the hour, she looks wide awake. Perky. She has been chosen, so to speak, as the Republican Party's sacrificial lamb. She looks straight into the camera and flashes perfect pearly whites at anyone in the country who is still awake and some in other countries just waking up. I secretly hope that she is wearing her pink fluffy slippers and PJ bottoms. I ask myself, who does this Senator from Alabama actually represent? Many Alabamans could hardly stay up this late when facing an early morning shift in one of the meat packing plants located in her home state, but I digress . . .


Senator Katie Britt is the only mother of young children currently working in the United States Senate. She is the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama and the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate. She represents many constituencies by that fact alone: women, mothers, working mothers, parents, single parents, single mothers. She ought to speak for those people who face myriad choices between child care and work each day, just for starters. Those choices are complicated and never easy for any working mother and parents because in many places in America, like Alabama, the required resources are not adequate to make reasonable choices between the work world and home. Some people have to opt out of the work force altogether or are forced to take jobs on the night shift to cover household expenses. Some defer bearing children; others in states like Alabama who find themselves pregnant do not have any choice. Who was Senator Britt really talking to in her awkward larger than life Barbie-ism in the midnight hour?


Scratching my mussed hair while rubbing my weary eyes in disbelief at this fictional 1950's T.V. program when women with perfectly coiffed hair wore high heels and earrings while pushing a vacuum cleaner around their suburban homes is a wake up call. Senator Britt is too young to remember how back in the day, she herself would not have had the option to make her dream come true of becoming a Senator in her home state. There is nothing in her demeanor and even less in her spoken words that celebrate such progressive change.


"She's a housewife", said the former college football coach turned Senior Senator of Alabama, Tommy Tuberville. The two are work colleagues holding the same job title. Yet following her moonlighting gig that is what he said in her defense! She, for all her smiling and straining, had left everyone else speechless. The best that Tommy could manage was a shrug, and his patronizing comment about this woman with whom he serves in the esteemed chamber. C'mon, would he have said something so demoralizing to his football team? No, because he, too, knows something about making dreams comes true.


Two Senators, duly elected, representing the same constinuency fell short in the glare of day in front of the people they are supposed to serve. These two pursued their own dreams, but leave little for their own citizens to reach for especially if the dream is to have a family but need help doing so with invitro fertilization, or conversely, when the positive pregnancy test is not a dream come true. (I'll skip all the worst case scenario non-allowable exceptions for another day.) Suffice it to say, dreams are made up of choices that we make freely, like becoming a U.S. Senator, just because you can. Britt is "living the dream", HER dream, as the first and only woman in the Alabama Senate thanks to progress made by those who came before her. She could champion that progress by passing on what she has inherited: her own right to choose her own dream. Sitting behind the kitchen counter sends the signal that the dream is ever elusive, unless it happens that you wish to become one of two senators in your home state. Do the math. The remainder of unfulfilled dreams is far greater for anyone who finds herself within these Senators' domain.




 
 
 

Build a Better Mousetrap?

That is one thing that a mouse would never do, according to Einstein when asked about the atomic bomb: Mankind invented the atomic bomb but no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap.


When the film Oppenheimer was released, I was in Berlin. The movie theatre at 4 p.m. on a weekday was packed. Subtitles translated the story into German. While this is not a movie review, if you haven’t seen the film but plan to, stop reading now. If you have seen the film you may remember the moment when after the testing has been accomplished with all that power released into the world for the first time, the audience knows what those scientists knew: They had invented the ultimate self-destruction of human kind. There was no turning back. But, there was a choice whether to use it on our own kind (and by extension the earth). The movie shows a struggle between those who want to release this innovation for the whole world to see and some who cannot agree. Enter the U.S.Federal Government. Why was this not a surprise? It is not because we know how the story ends, but because we Americans have come to expect our own Government to use force to solve problems around the world, and as is often the case, we are expected to do so by others looking for support. Words, too, can be forceful. Yet, when the solution is to shoot first and ask questions later, this sets up a self fulfilling prophecy. World War II was not the exception. It is the rule by which every conflict and war has been measured since. We have grown used to it. We do not look away. The story repeats daily. Somewhere.


I think the most shocking words spoken in the film are by Oppenheimer himself after the bomb that he masterminded had annihilated 200,000 Japanese people in their own country. He said that he wished he had gotten the bomb finished sooner so it could have been used on the Germans. I held my breath wondering how all the German women and men seated in the theatre with me, an American, must have felt. I cannot imagine.


The idea of building such a murder weapon to use en masse should go against our sensibilities. Are we humans so self destructive that even a lowly mouse would not conceive of such a thing (assuming it could)? There is no logic behind these decisions that can be justified for any reason; while there are any number of excuses to tell ourselves or to be told by those who support such a decision. The inevitable long-term unintended consequences still reverberate whenever threats are heard from the likes of Putin or from the unstable regimes in North Korea and Iran. The threats alone should be deterrents, but one day someone will not see it that way, and Kabloom!


There is nothing hyperbolic in such a thought that could lead us down a dark path of destruction. Civilizations have been wiped out in many places by those in power with power at their fingertips. Whose fingertips should we entrust this power to is the question to ask ourselves? Who do we trust to protect citizens of our country and those others who look to the U.S. for help? We have no room for error in making this all important decision that holds our fate and the fate of the world. It's that serious. One vote is all we get. It counts for everything we hold dear. It counts for the future of the earth.






 
 
 

“We didn’t say any thing.”

“He was a Nazi.” He had invited her to breakfast then talked openly about hating “these” people, and“those” people who are not like him i.e., white. “We didn’t say any thing,” said my friend recounting her experience in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She seemed to wish that she had said something. I asked: “Why don’t we say anything?” The question hung there between us.


One week ago, Nazis carried red flags bearing swastikas and marched in formation down the Main Street of Nashville, Tennessee on a Saturday afternoon. They wore their uniform of red shirts and black face masks to hide their identities.*


From Nashville to Santa Fe and everywhere in between, the “idea” of Nazis rising up as if they are part of the mainstream is just beginning to take hold in a visible way. It is shocking. It is frightening. It is intended to both shock and frighten you and me. Last summer while in Berlin, I sensed a contriteness over their own Nazi history that the world should never forget. It is becoming clear that given the chance, a next generation of fascists will try again to obliterate entire populations of "those" people. In Germany, the reminders live on in memorials, in remnants of a wall that is no more, and in gold inlaid markers embedded into sidewalks where Jews were forcibly taken from their homes in broad daylight. Each "stumbling stone" bears the name and year of birth and death of a Jew who had lived there and was killed in a concentration camp built by Nazis for one purpose and one purpose only: annihilation. Nobody said any thing.


Why don't we say any thing when confronted with an ideology that dehumanizes others? The term Nazism is defined as:


Rejecting rationalism, liberalism, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and all movements of international cooperation and peace, it stressed instinct, the subordination of the individual to the state, and the necessity of blind and unswerving obedience to leaders appointed from above. It also emphasized the inequality of humans and races and the right of the strong to rule the weak; sought to purge or suppress competing political, religious, and social institutions; advanced an ethic of hardness and ferocity; and partly destroyed class distinctions by drawing into the movement misfits and failures from all social classes**


All of the above is meant to do exactly what it says, in a word: disempower. Any one who does not adopt such a perverse ideology should somehow be rendered silent. The simplest way to disempower large groups and individuals is to strip them of their own voice. But how?


It starts innocently enough when we self-censor. For example, the neighbor down the street may want to engage in that conversation about how these/those people are the problem with this country. Rather than starting an argument, or having an uncomfortable conversation, we do not say any thing. Or, at work, or school, or let's be honest, at church, words spoken out loud that are offensive, oppressive, or outright lies go unmet with any opposing comments. This self-censoring is exactly the tactic that Nazis used within neighborhoods as neighbors let neighbors be unjustly harassed at home! We know that was only the beginning of that horror story. In part it was allowed to happen because nobody said any thing.


Main Street USA on a Satruday afternoon has its own place in our American lives and memories and psyches. Whether downtown or rural, Main Street has traditionally been where people go to shop, or take the kids for pizza, or to simply stroll and stop on the sidewalk to linger with an old friend. It is the main thoroughfare for the Fourth of July and Memorial Day parades when town officials and local children wave to folks from the neighborhood while the school band plays on. This may sound like a Rockwellian portrait of a long ago America, and to some degree I would agree. Yet, when a nefarious group trespassed on that American icon in the "hometown of country music" our reaction is visceral and must be vocal. "These" people, "those" Nazis signaled to the rest of us with their red flags their intentions to destroy Main Street and all that it signfies, forever. They rightly wave "red flags" as a warning to be heeded. The warning is meant to silence us. If we let silencing begin it is at our own peril. Let's remember that Nazis got away with murder because neighbors stood by silently.


In the words of author, Timothy Snyder*** . . ."people who were living in fear of repression remembered how their neighbors treated them. A smile, a handshake, or a word of greeting -- banal gestures in a normal situation -- took on great significance. When friends, colleagues, and acquaintances looked away or crossed the street to avoid contact, fear grew. . . In the most dangerous of times, those who escape and survive generally know people whom they can trust. Having old friends is the politics of last resort. And making new ones is the first step toward change."


The shock value will wear off as Nazis show up in the commonplaces of middle America where they live, too! After a while, their presence will have a numbing effect on our sensibilities like seeing homeless people on every street corner in America. The Nazi threat is not from yesteryear. It is marching down the streets where we live. When we do not say any thing, they get the message.


I, and I hope you, too, will choose to add your voice to the people of Nashville who DID say something to the masked cowards who tried to take power over their Main Street, and therefore over all of us. https://x.com/brotherjones_/status/1758936273153085941?s=20



Please add your voice (anonymously if you prefer) in the comments section as a first step and a show of solidarity. This is our best hope against those dark ideologies. We must get used to saying some thing rather than not saying any thing.




***"On Tyranny Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century"




 
 
 
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