Fighting Back is an Act of Optimism
This Memorial Day, it is time to remember what our leaders have forgotten
DAVID ROTHKOPF
As I have written before, my father was a Holocaust survivor. He and his parents barely escaped the Nazis. Virtually all of his relatives—more than three dozen—were not so fortunate. They were murdered in concentration camps and ghettoes by an army and a nation that had rejected democracy and decency, embraced fascism and that had elevated white supremacist extremists to positions of power.
Even as I write those words, I’ll admit it, given the current state of our nation and the despicable nature of our current leadership, it makes me physically ill. I’m not exaggerating.
While I have warned this is where we were headed for many, many years, since long before Trump took office, it is still shocking to realize what we have become, that despite all the evidence that recent history has given us, all the stark lessons it has provided, we have made profoundly bad choices as a nation.
big snip
I was also up at Columbia, a little after graduate school, when I had my first great moment of cognitive dissonance about the U.S.. It was a November night in 1980. We were at a bar on the corner of 106th Street and Amsterdam when first word came that Ronald Reagan had been elected president of the United States. We were shocked. We stood outside in the street on a chilly night and talked about how incredible it was that somehow a movie actor, not a very good one at that, was somehow chosen to hold the same job George Washington and Abraham Lincoln once held.
Had we only known…
His election opened the door to the future we are living today. He laid the groundwork for policies that favored the rich and promoted the idea that helping average Americans was a waste of the government’s time and money. Government itself was an evil, he argued. The policies he promoted have shaped the period since and led to a massive divide in America, inequality that I believe is still the greatest threat we face. He also promoted a jingoistic view of the country that made it almost sacrilege to criticize the military…and kicked off the right’s promotion of an ever more powerful executive. As it turns out, he was also a racist and enabled deep corruption within the highest circles of his administration.
Reagan was the first step toward Trump. There is no denying that now. And those who do deny it, are out of touch with reality and pose a threat to our ever recovering from this unhappy chapter in our national existence.
https://davidrothkopf.substack.com/p/fighting-back-is-an-act-of-optimism
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