REMEMBRANCE, IF YOU’RE OLD ENOUGH, CAN BE PAINFUL
Photo by Kedar Gadge on Unsplash
I was born in 1933. So, rather infamously, was the Third Reich.
Though I was out of the U.S. at the time — busy getting born in Brazil to my educational missionary parents — authoritarianism (German style) and I grew up together. That was about all we had in common; German citizens suffered and died in concentration camps or suffered in lesser ways under tyranny while I enjoyed a carefree childhood in small-town Virginia.
My good fortune was thanks to my parents having realized that a global upheaval was coming and thus given up a life they loved — my dad, helping start a college in Porto Alegre that still exists; my mother, teaching music and dance to preschoolers — to bring their four daughters back to the U.S. I was incredibly lucky to have had those insouciant years.
But here is one of my earliest memories:
My father appeared, in what seemed the middle of the night, beside the double bed I shared with my sister Mimi. We were about 4 and 6. He woke us very gently and carried us, one in either arm, downstairs to where our mother sat in her traditional armchair with her traditional darning. He deposited us at her feet, in front of the Philco radio.
There was crowd noise, cheering I think, crackling from the radio, and voices speaking a language we didn’t understand. My father said, simply, that someone was going to speak, that it was a man who would cause terrible trouble in the world and he wanted us to hear what a madman sounded like. Soon the cheers grew, and the man began to speak.
It was Adolph Hitler.
We listened for probably less than five minutes before we were picked up and returned to our bed; we immediately fell asleep.
I don’t remember the conversations we had at breakfast the next morning and in the days that followed. But I remember understanding the lesson my father wanted us to learn. We didn’t know the words, but we had heard the message. It was a message of anger, hatred and grievance — delivered by a man seeking to take control of his country and the world.
Here is why I am haunted by that memory:
For the past eight years I have heard the same message, this time delivered in a language I understand. Anger, hatred of my fellow citizens — as well as fellow humans seeking refuge — grievance for all things not aligned with the shouter’s own aims. Some sweeping and some incredibly petty. Threats of retribution for those perceived grievances. Vulgarity.
Four years ago I thought it might go away, as I and millions of other Americans chose a kinder, gentler voice.
But rather than ceding power as had peacefully been done since the beginning of our democracy, the would-be autocrat clung to his anger, hatred and grievance. And like the authoritarian nearly a century ago he was able to draw support from countless fellow citizens — good and bad — and to feed the anger and the hatred.
I am braced for four years, should I live so long, of our freedoms being chipped away, our venerable institutions weakened or taken over, our free press silenced, our leader’s perceived enemies punished, our beautiful planet desecrated, our hallowed traditions of decency and accountability demolished. I plan to join forces with all those who will stand against these things happening. But I know, because he’s told us, that such are his plans.
I recognize the voice.
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