Connecting the Old to the New is Duck Soup.

“It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up" -Mark Twain

 

Students continue to want to talk about the 2016 election and its aftermath more so than any other topic. My Spanish-speaking students have voiced their worries over possible deportation of themselves or family members. Do Muslim students feel safe? Recently there have been attacks at Jewish cemeteries and bomb threats called in at Jewish Community Centers in most states. Membership in the Klan is rising. Hate speech is getting louder and more pronounced. Racists, sexists and bigots are feeling the sun on their faces for the first time in a long time. We live in nervous times.

The optimist in me knows this country will survive. The pessimist in me is wonders if my son will grown up in a country inherently different than the one I grew up in. And the historian in me notes contemporary signs with numerous historical similarities such as the central tenet of William Graham Sumner's What Social Classes Owe to Each Other?, to xenophobic organizations such as the American Protection Association and both the mentality behind and the actions of HUAC. 

Students want to talk about what is going on now. There are plenty of examples in recent US history to draw parallels starting with the major themes and ideologies of the Gilded Age. A new Americanization movement, a desire by some politicians to dismantle the social safety net, a return to laissez-faire economics, and embracing the old belief that government should play no role in your lives (except maybe to deliver the mail). That government is the antithesis of American liberties. Are we entering a new Gilded Age?

A Note From Bill Moyers: A Date That Will Live in Infamy

 A date that will live in infamy. That is how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described the events of Dec. 7, 1941. Sept. 11, 2001 was second date which deserved that designation. Both of these dates resulted from America being attacked by hostile powers from beyond our shores. Jan. 20, 2017 may well qualify as the third infamous date. The attack in this event, came, however, not from some malignant foreign source, but from our own nation’s seat of power, the office of president of the United States.

This column was first drafted the evening of the Inauguration. While I did not and could not watch the sacred tradition in which this new president took the oath of office, I did later watch a recording of his speech. It left me speechless! The overarching theme was that America has been a desperately worthless, weak nation, devoid of any decency, and ruled by small ineffective people. But now a savior has arrived, and America is going to be great again, pulled out of the malaise that has over the recent years been created by our leaders who filled the swamp and poisoned it.

Of course, patriotism is a virtue rightly ingrained in our national psyches. But a national chauvinism that positions us against every other nation or entity and pledges that we will produce the military firepower able to get and keep their attention, and provide safety at home and peace in the world, is just silly.

I know it may not be considered in good taste to invoke what Adolf Hitler promised the German people, but this evening I have been listening to and watching a recording of his first speech as chancellor in 1933. Hitler began by decimating the reputations of the leaders before him who he regarded as having demoralized and debauched the nation. He then promised to make Germany great again — he actually used the exact German equivalent words! He said that this powerful rebirth of Germany’s world role must be brought about by the Volk — the German peasants and workers — the people. They must stand without equivocation, putting Germany first: first in their lives and first in the world. There must be trust in no other nation, and Germany must form no alliances in order to safeguard the Volk. And it will be done because it is the will of God!

It’s all there, friends. And if the United States goes any further down that road we will end up enemies of the rest of the world, with decreasing economic strength despite our increased military might. One might even remember the quasi-Nazi, Charles Lindbergh, who led a sizable handful of citizens in chanting, “America First!”

Thus we may produce the end of the world’s best experiment in democracy. I have recently come across an author who predicted 20 years ago what happened today. In 1997, the philosopher Richard Rorty in his book, Achieving our Country, described what would inevitably happen if the liberals who have controlled the nation forget to pay attention to the vast millions of rural residents and desperate unemployed workers:

“At this point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strong man to vote for, and…once a strong man takes office, nobody can predict what will happen.”

If the 1933 events in Germany are in any way a prototype of what we can now expect, that should shake us body and soul.

What shall we do now? I doubt we can pass this off as simply an intellectual or academic problem that can be solved by further conferences, documents, symposia or formal papers. Perhaps we should rather look at what has produced serious positive change in the recent past. I think of a woman who just sat in the front seat of a bus, and the Freedom Riders who traveled throughout the American South at the risk of their lives.

And I remember the tens of thousands of young and older people who hit the streets and finally whose acts were critical in ending the disastrous Vietnam War.

To the extent that these actions were nonviolent, they gained the respect of the American people. Violence just sets things back. New generations of in-the-street activists, not journalists or academics, might blunt the destructive nationalistic thrust of the new administration and prepare the rest of us to play an important role in making America good again.

 http://billmoyers.com/story/a-date-that-will-live-in-infamy/