CSotD: Things I would have done then
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At Cartoon Movement, German cartoonist Guido Kuehn draws a parallel that is more apt than many who talk about refugees realize.
The fact is, Anne Frank is more than a symbol of what can happen to people who don't flee in time.
She is a symbol of what can happen to people who try to flee but are turned away.
Otto Frank applied for his family to enter the US as refugees. As he wrote to a college friend then living in America,
I would not ask if conditions here would not force me to do all I can in time to be able to avoid worse … Perhaps you remember that we have two girls. It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for. Our own fate is of less importance.
The Franks were denied. Mrs. Frank and the girls died in the camps.
I don't have an easy answer, or even a difficult one, because I have a feeling that, once more, we're dealing with the crazies and lunatics over in the deplorable half of the basket.
They either don't care or they can't be reached or they can't be reached because they don't care.
These are the same people who don't know that welfare reform ended the ability of able-bodied people to sit on their couches and collect food stamps, and who continue to prattle on about those bums who won't work.
They even claim to know some, which is akin to those who who have a cousin who worked with the guys who staged the moon landing in New Mexico.
And, like Dear Leader, they probably aren't actively choosing to lie.
They believe the falsehoods that tumble out of their mouths, perhaps because under all that tin foil, they are convinced that everybody else is just making stuff up and so they join in what they think is normal conversation.
And they consider themselves clever for knowing what nobody else does.
Sarah Glidden, who has spent time in the Middle East and among refugees, refutes the lies about the alleged stream of refugees swarming into this country. Read the rest of her piece at the Nib, but, really, what's the point?
There are those who supported Trump either because they didn't believe he'd really do all that, or they read the polls and decided to cast a protest vote because, according to everyone, there was no chance of a Trump win. And they can be reached.
But they won't be reached on niche alternative websites that they will never see.
However, perhaps they could be reached by well-informed friends, which is why Glidden's piece matters: It's been pointed out to you, and you can now point it out to someone else, or, at least, use the information in your next conversation with someone who is only misinformed and not insane.
There is hope. One of my former reporters, who was, and is, very conservative, is now in college and passed along this tweet on her feed yesterday.
And she's right and the guy who wrote this is right and those who continue to view this issue as liberal/conservative are wrong.
Now is the time. Now is the moment. Step up or shut up, but don't come back later and say you didn't know.
And remember who it was who shut up back when Otto Frank was begging friends to help him get his family to safety in time.
Remember those who said they didn't think it would really come to that, that they didn't know.
Ah, well. Eisenhower reportedly ordered that German civilians be shown the camps, so that nobody could ever deny that this had happened.
How'd that work out?
Still, here's another hopeful note: I'm told by my veteran son that his Facebook feed blew up the other day with Iraq veterans who discovered that one of their translators had been stranded at JFK over the order.
It makes me think of a friend of mine who lived among the montagnards in the Cambodian highlands. A few years after we lost touch, when the war ended, his former brothers-in-arms were told to go to a bay and await the ships that would carry them to freedom.
The ships never turned up, but their former enemies did, and I've often wondered how Bob felt when he heard the news.
That was a bureaucratic foul up, however, and not national policy.
I know a judge has stopped the order, sort of, for a little while, pending whatever. But it's still national policy, in concept if not in action.
Unless more Republicans grow spines.
Unless more citizens take the time to object.
Unless all those people who talk about what they would have done then step up and do it now.
So, yes, there is some value in preaching to the choir, if they go forth and spread the word.
In that spirit …
Here is your 16 minutes of outrage:
(Bear in mind, this aired in 2014. It's not about what Trump has done, but
about how he was able to gain the power to do it.)
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