THIS IS AN ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES-CIRCA 1922.
READ AND TAKE HEED
"Several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes."
"You can't expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them."
I know the results of last night’s election are shocking to most of us.
I read a headline this morning that said:
“Don’t mourn, fight like hell. Old hatreds won the day. But they can and must be vanquished.”
That’s not a bad way to think about where we find ourselves this morning.
This election cycle we experienced a battle between the two leading candidates for president unlike any other. And yesterday the country elected a president unlike any other: a man who preyed on the worst fears of our society, a man who proudly vowed to use a religious test to keep people from entering the country, and a man who ran on the most anti-LGBT platform in the history of the Republican or any party.
As tempting as it may be, fleeing the country is not a solution. Nor can we become paralyzed with grief or fear. Now, more than ever, is the time for progressive and fair–minded Americans of all parties to stand tall, strong, and together to fight for our values, for the inalienable rights to which we are all entitled, and for the well-being of the most vulnerable in our society.
At the Center, we are doing several things. We know that the consequences of the election both for our diverse LGBT community (and many other communities and values that were demeaned and threatened during the campaign) and our Center are serious. So, we are assessing the landscape if President-elect Trump makes true on his many promises. That will better enable us to develop strategies for protecting our community and our Center. And this will certainly require strengthening alliances with other progressive organizations whose missions and values are also under attack. Fortunately, the Center has been doing that work for years, but now it must be done with greater urgency and focus.
The same applies to all of us as individuals. In her concession speech, I thought Hillary Clinton said it quite well:
Our constitutional democracy demands our participation, not just every four years, but all the time. So let’s do all we can to keep advancing the causes and values we all hold dear...For people of all races, and religions, for men and women, for immigrants, for LGBT people, and people with disabilities. For everyone.
Beginning today, the work of the Center may be more important than it has ever been. If Obamacare is overturned, we’ll continue to offer affordable medical care for those abandoned by their government. If hate crimes rise, we’ll continue to offer counseling and legal advocacy. If members of our community feel depressed or emotionally distraught, we’ll continue to offer affordable mental health counseling. And we’ll continue to provide life-sustaining care for the most vulnerable in our community, including homeless youth and seniors, while vigilantly fighting for and defending our full equality.
The Center is always here with you and we are always here FOR you.
I do not want to give you false hope. But let me assure you that I DO have hope. First, I can’t forget that a majority of Americans actually voted against Donald Trump and what his campaign represented. I find some solace in that. Second, our community has faced terrible challenges before and we have not only survived, we have thrived. We have to draw on those reserves now. If there was ever a time for people who share our values to come together, it’s now. We must resist division. We must resist falsehoods. We must resist all efforts to turn our country back.
History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & TrumpRERE
La Peste di Firenze
REPOSTING courtesy- tobias stone It seems we’re entering another of those stupid seasons humans impose on themselves at fairly regular intervals. I am sketching out here opinions based on information, they may prove right, or may prove wrong, and they’re intended just to challenge and be part of a wider dialogue.
My background is archaeology, so also history and anthropology. It leads me to look at big historical patterns. My theory is that most peoples’ perspective of history is limited to the experience communicated by their parents and grandparents, so 50–100 years. To go beyond that you have to read, study, and learn to untangle the propaganda that is inevitable in all telling of history. In a nutshell, at university I would fail a paper if I didn’t compare at least two, if not three opposing views on a topic. Taking one telling of events as gospel doesn’t wash in the comparative analytical method of research that forms the core of British academia. (I can’t speak for other systems, but they’re definitely not all alike in this way).
So zooming out, we humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another. This handy list shows all the wars over time. Wars are actually the norm for humans, but every now and then something big comes along. I am interested in the Black Death, which devastated Europe. The opening of Boccaccio’s Decameron describes Florence in the grips of the Plague. It is as beyond imagination as the Somme, Hiroshima, or the Holocaust. I mean, you quite literally can’t put yourself there and imagine what it was like. For those in the midst of the Plague it must have felt like the end of the world.
But a defining feature of humans is their resilience. To us now it seems obvious that we survived the Plague, but to people at the time it must have seemed incredible that their society continued afterwards. Indeed, many takes on the effects of the Black Death are that it had a positive impact in the long term. Well summed up here: “By targeting frail people of all ages, and killing them by the hundreds of thousands within an extremely short period of time, the Black Death might have represented a strong force of natural selection and removed the weakest individuals on a very broad scale within Europe,“ …In addition, the Black Death significantly changed the social structure of some European regions. Tragic depopulation created the shortage of working people. This shortage caused wages to rise. Products prices fell too. Consequently, standards of living increased. For instance, people started to consume more food of higher quality.”
But for the people living through it, as with the World Wars, Soviet Famines, Holocaust, it must have felt inconceivable that humans could rise up from it. The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War… it’s a long list. Events of massive destruction from which humanity recovered and move on, often in better shape.
At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another. During the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme I was struck that it was a direct outcome of the assassination of an Austrian Arch Duke in Bosnia. I very much doubt anyone at the time thought the killing of a European royal would lead to the death of 17 million people.
My point is that this is a cycle. It happens again and again, but as most people only have a 50–100 year historical perspective they don’t see that it’s happening again. As the events that led to the First World War unfolded, there were a few brilliant minds who started to warn that something big was wrong, that the web of treaties across Europe could lead to a war, but they were dismissed as hysterical, mad, or fools, as is always the way, and as people who worry about Putin, Brexit, and Trump are dismissed now.
Then after the War to end all Wars, we went and had another one. Again, for a historian it was quite predictable. Lead people to feel they have lost control of their country and destiny, people look for scapegoats, a charismatic leader captures the popular mood, and singles out that scapegoat. He talks in rhetoric that has no detail, and drums up anger and hatred. Soon the masses start to move as one, without any logic driving their actions, and the whole becomes unstoppable.
