Within A Historical Novel, An Omen

I'm reading more historical novels nowadays. It's a good way to brush up on some of the stuff I taught in a way that keeps you from feeling that you're plowing through something.

Sometimes, though, you run into things that serve as an omen. Such is how I'm approaching Winter of the World by Ken Follett.

Not only is Follett a good story teller, he does his homework. He has a way of drilling down into details that pure historians might find unnecessary to convey the story. Follett understands that history happens to real people and affects them in real ways. That's how you not only perceive what happened, you feel it.

He makes the reader feel, for instance, what happened inside of Nazi-controlled Germany in the years leading up to World War II. It was a slow, gradual strangulation of civil liberties with a ratcheted-up program of domestic terror. Follett helps you understand how that could happen anywhere.

Like here, very soon, if the wrong person gets to be president again. The ingredients are out there and in perfectly noticeable operation right now. All it will take is the will to manipulate them together, and you will have a police state. We are creeping closer to it right how, in fact, but certain safeguards remain in place. They will disappear starting on January 21, 2025, if the country continues to lull itself into somnolence.

Certain concepts must be reinforced:

• Certain designated peoples really are superior to others and deserve to be treated that way.
• Power is seized, not earned. Its possession defines its own justifiability.
• Force is the only thing that makes people controllable.
• Law does not matter. The leader's whims only do.
• The truth is only relative to what the leader wants to be true. It need not be challenged.

Such is the way Nazi Germany was run. Such is the way the United States of America will be run if the election goes the wrong way.

To fulfill the above corrupt values, the leader needed mindless minions to carry out his wishes. He found them in the Sturm Abltielemung, or the S.A., the Storm Troopers, who intimidated and injured (and worse) thousands of those people of conscience in the early days, when the Nazis struggled slowly to gain power. They conjure uniforms to confirm their paramilitary dominion, dared anyone to challenge it, and gained the loyalty, passive or otherwise, of local police.

That's not here already? Au contraire. It's here and ready to "stand by," as ex- told them in one of the 2020 presidential debates. May I remind you of the:

• Proud Boys
• Oath Keepers
• Three-Percenters
• Those sad specimens who follow Q-ANON
• And other fringe groups

all waiting for the signal that it's time to enforce whatever their leader wants. They will join together and, after some kind of internal squabble about who will run it--with murders likely--they will vow their loyalty not to the Constitution (though they may say so in a feeble attempt to detract from their true goals), but to ex- personally. You will see them carrying out acts of terror, very noticeably, so that others get the message. You will see also them at the offices of MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others who really do believe in the freedom of speech and the press, carrying out warrants for arrest from a corrupted Justice Department.

Expect people like Rachel Maddox, Jake Tapper, Bill Maher (yes, you too, Bill) and Lawrence O'Donnell to be arrested, as well as genuine political rivals like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden. Charges? Well, there will be some, but their substances will not matter. Quickly, almost imperceptibly, protests will disappear, too.

Are you watching what is happening in Russia? What Putin is ruthlessly doing to those to stand up to him? Count on it. Even more thoroughly, because there will be more resources at hand.

This is not to mention how we might fare economically, with crushing tariffs. Think inflation will somehow end? It will explode.

Or how we will sour on religion, which will be a cat's paw to drive compliance amongst enough of the populace to reinforce obedience. This betrayal of an otherwise good thing to download the bad is likely to make people ill. If the congregation's devotion is to the Almighty first, though, its tax-free status will be attacked and possibly eliminated.

Climate change? Fossil fuel control? Forget it. Ex- has already promised oil magnates much less (read: none) production safeguards if they provide him with $1B worth of support. That's one of his tens of thousands of lies, of course, but he'll do everything he can do toward that end.

Social Security? Medicare? Count on, at the very least, less service than you've ever had. Administrative functionality will come to a near halt. If the programs aren't actually trashed--if the Republicans take control of Congress, it will take them oh, ten days or so to bring that about--the programs will be rendered helpless by massive neglect.

The IRS, too. I received, finally, my 2020 income boost a month ago--spring of 2024. And that's with an administration that means us well, cleaning up more neglect of the previous one.

If this scares you, sorry not sorry. The Atlantic and The New Republic have also run whole issues specifically speculating what would happen if ex- takes over again. The feature articles are written by people much smarter than me. Yet, it is not what he has in mind: It's the ability to carry it out, the efficiency with which his fascist tendencies can be unleashed. The above mentioned groups will be only too happy to do that for him, establishing a paramilitary bulwark from which to suppress any and all who would merely be declaring these acts to be unfair, unconstitutional and unconscionable.

People are not exactly up on Joe Biden. But they must be persuaded that the alternative would be worse than any president we would ever have had, worse by miles and miles. Get them to vote, while you can still do so.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

There's A Stand on Israel Out There Somewhere. I Just Know There is.

I don't know. What the hell would you do with Israel?

Would you finally give up on them and refuse support? Really? How could you do that and not deny the Holocaust and its effects? Or have time and tide pushed us beyond it?

Is there someplace in-between where you could take a stand? You know, kind of a situation-by-situation position? Could you map out some kind of rhetoric which would clarify that?

How about: If Israel were threatened to the core of its very existence. Okay, let's go there.

You mean, then, that October 7th did not represent that? You could only say that in retrospect, now couldn't you? Because October 7th itself was a vicious, murderous, completely destructive attempt by Hamas to--I guess--take out Israel once and for all, as ridiculous a goal as that was and is.

Or, maybe Hamas received what it believed to be a signal from Hezbollah or Iran itself that the time was ripe to strike, that they would garner military and logistical support to bring Israel to its knees. Did that ever have a chance without an actual declaration of war?

Regardless, there's no doubt Israel was under threat. You mean, American support was not appropriate? That Israel should have been left alone to figure out what to do?

Okay, it was, pretty much. And it responded by invading Gaza and leaving it to ruin, subjecting its denizens to total destruction and starvation that it has done little to address. American military hardware has already been established there long ago. No doubt it played a major role in the counter destruction that as ensued.

You mean Israel had no right to do that? Really? Then what was it supposed to do? Wave the white flag and negotiate? Uh-huh. His people would have gone for that about as far as they could have thrown Benjamin Netanyahu, whose popularity was at a very low point when all of this began.

Finally, though, President Biden has had enough. He can't watch all this and take responsibility any longer. So he's cut off American bombs meant to devastate Rafah.

Well, that's nice. He wants to mollify pro-Palestinian activists and make the campus tents go away. Except for two things: It's a little late in the game, with Gaza already in ruins; and I highly doubt that withdrawing these bombs will do nothing more than delay the inevitable, and total, destruction of Rafah. Israel will stop devastating Hamas until it is sure Hamas is rendered helpless about as much as it will stop snowing atop Mount Everest.

But it won't work. It. Will. Not. Work. If there are just a few Hamas fighters left, a few who fled and found refuge somewhere else, who might have disappeared amongst the thousands of refugees, they will re-form and recommit themselves with even greater zeal. Wouldn't you? If neo-Nazis have managed to reconnoiter and begin a new surge--and they have, name the country--what's to stop the sons and daughters of present-day Hamas fighters from doing the same? 

Israel must know this. Yet, the devastation continues.

If it takes another ten or twenty years, another generation for Hamas to recover, so what? It took 30 years for Ho Chi Minh and his cohorts to rid Vietnam of foreign domination, which includes, of course, some 58,000 Americans. To true revolutionaries, time is irrelevant.

I see where the U.N. has voted for Palestinian independence. Vastly outnumbered, the U.S. and Israel voted no. So much for the two-state solution. So much for any solution, besides utter destruction. 

I suppose we have another plan for the situation. Let's see it. I want to see anything that makes any sense at this point.

Because I can't think of anything. While writing essays, one gets to a point at which it's time to quit, to remove oneself so that things don't drag on. When I considered that, I thought it apropos because nobody knows how or when to withdraw from the Israel-Palestine situation, either. Nobody knows when or if it will come to a place where things will finally settle.

Think I'd come up with something unique and brilliant so we can move on? Sorry. Neither have some pretty smart, crafty, politically wise people. Henry Kissinger couldn't. Or Jimmy Carter, though we all thought he had. Nor Anwar Sadat, murdered for his diplomatic courage. Nor Bill Clinton. Nor Yitzak Rabin, who met a fate similar to Sadat's.

So I might as well stop now. Just as it has been since 1948, someone will pick up the banner and keep fighting. All they need is an excuse. The more they fight, the more excuses are ready-made.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Just A Moment. But A Moment Is All It Took.

I have a bumper sticker on my car. It's been on any car I've had since 2017.

For it was then that this pestilence, this ugliness, officially descended upon America. You know what I'm talking about.

The whole societal discussion turned nasty and ridiculous. It has remained that way since. It has even gotten worse. Who in the world thought we would be discussing the value of shooting one's dog, to name a for instance?

But most of us on the side of decency, of propriety, of politeness, saw what was coming a full year before. We cruised along, though, secure in the false knowledge that the country wouldn't actually go where these people were heading--toward abject racism, endless insults, and incredible irrationality.

We're here, though. And it threatens to once again take over.

So I ordered the bumper sticker from a group called Common Dreams, and got a few for some political allies of mine. After I sent them out, I kept a couple, which was fortunate because in 2020, I got rear-ended by some fool who was paying attention to his wife and slammed me while I and a number of folks were stalled on the freeway (and never asked if I was all right--I was--never, in fact, made any comment). That car had one, too.

It reads:

Not Normal

RESIST 

Back in 2017, there were few people who wouldn't immediately know what that was referring to. But as in most things, normalization creeps in like the fog. We know in 2024 that this subterfuge of real political give-and-take will be with us for the foreseeable future. It is not a quick surge of emotional trash, like a garbage can that has been blown over by a sudden storm. Oh, no. It is more like garbage that has been forgotten, has been strewn and remained for weeks, if not months, and rats have visited and maintained their presence.

If nothing else, there is even more reason to display the bumper sticker. It still isn't normal out there. It's still terribly damaging to where politics should be taking us, but unless you've been hiding in Carlsbad Caverns, you get this by now. The destruction of any rational discussion is exactly the point of it, exactly the prelude to its cancellation. For without rationality, power can dominate anything, assume anything, put anything out there that makes no sense. Which is what's continuing to happen from one side and will completely happen if it wins again.

But you know the effects of bumper stickers; small, even negligible. People see them at stoplights or quickly passing you on the highway and don't bother to react. There is no real confrontation. No one has, to be best of my knowledge, beeped their horns and either have waved in agreement or flipped me off in dissent.

Until yesterday. I was dropping off a bill I had to pay, including the check with which I was paying it, at the Whitefish Bay Post Office, en route to another trip I had to take. Based on reports of some idiot locals breaking into corner post office boxes, opening the envelopes to steal the money within, I have since taken to go directly inside the buildings and drop the mail into the slots provided. I had pulled up to a parking place, and so had someone else.

The man was dressed in a button-down, dark plaid shirt with what might have been Dockers-kind of slacks: the kind of understated style that frequents that town with its understated but endless stream of old money. He wore glasses. He was clipped nicely. I wondered if he owned a sweatshirt. But he was neat, clean, and appropriate.

As I came to the door, he took a look at the bumper sticker and asked, "What's that all about?" It was the first time anyone had taken the bother to notice.

"(-----)," I said, mouthing the name of the main perpetrator, the dominant liar, for a rare moment. You will notice here that, consistent with previous practice, I do not print his name, and in conversations, I try to refer to him in an indirect yet obvious way. So it shall ever be, whether he tricks the country into re-electing him or not. I do not advance the names of rapists, of criminals, of otherwise disgusting maladroits, especially if still alive. I will have to come up with a new nickname for him should the country make another enormous mistake in November, but oh, there are so many possibilities.

Then I added, "There's nothing normal about him." It was, admittedly, a mild comment compared to many others I could have made, summarizing my intense loathing. But he really wanted to know. He really was mystified. I wondered whether he was another victim of the country's normalization of a hoodlum. 

I stood for a moment, wondering whether he would like to comment. He didn't. He looked stunned walking past, shaking his head gently and very slowly. He didn't want to take me on.

Lucky for him. I was in the kind of mood that I don't get into much anymore, in which I wait in the tall grass for someone to say something really stupid and leap on them like a panther. If he would have invited elaboration, I would have been too happy to oblige. Go ahead, I would probably have said, tell me any good he has done anyone, including himself, seeing as how he's been dragged to court in four different ways now. Tell me it's a conspiracy. Tell me it's so unfair. Be an ersatz victim, just like him.

Would he have agreed with the sticker's sentiment, I would have heard so quickly. I wondered if he thought I meant that resisting ex- was, in fact, not normal. But once he understood, he couldn't gather himself to put up a meaningful objection. I couldn't blame him. What else is there to say about this venom-filled snake? On the other hand, he has his money. What does he care?

It has boiled down to this, this in seven years: We all know where we are. There seems to be little discussion left. That takes only a moment, but a moment, and a glance, is all it took; a realization that the ruin that he has brought the country is still being noticed. In the meantime: This is not normal. Resist.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark