THE LINE

by Ruth A. Sheets

I just finished reading the novel Resistance by Jennifer A. Nielsen.  It is  about the holocaust in Poland.  As I read, I could not help but think we now have concentration camps here in America.  We permit our president to malign people of color, to drag children away from parents for indefinite periods, just because.  And, Mr. Trump’s (that president)  followers accept this as well.

It is not that I can't believe it is happening here, I do.  I have watched the fear mongering by Republican candidates and government operatives since 9/11 and beyond.  This has caused many conservatives to jump into fear in ways that can set aside their humanity.  It is that I don’t want  it to be happening here.

Ms. Nielsen’s book describes some of the atrocities perpetrated on Polish Jews and others during WWII.   They were done by people who were racists but would not have tortured and shot children in the streets before the flood of fear overtook them.  We know now that what  happened to them is the fear part of the brain, the amygdala took over and they saw only animals, cockroaches needing to be stepped on before they were destroyed.  These fear-drowned people would then go with their kids to ride the merry-go-round while people down the street were being massacred. 

When and how did the crossover happen for those Germans and Poles?  When will the crossover happen to conservatives here? 

It was not a wide line they had to cross.  It began slowly with shunning Jews, just not talking to or doing business with them anymore.  The next steps were also rather small, but inevitable for a lot of people, turning their backs on cruelties done by others, stealing Jewish property, tossing rocks through windows, gossiping to neighbors about some imagined action one of them did.  Ultimately, they "got off on" the hurting and killing through a steady escalation. 

What about here?  Well, there are already many who would prefer dead migrants in the desert to living ones asking for refuge or asylum.  That is a first line.  A worker will face another trial in Arizona because he helped 2 migrants with some water and a temporary place to sleep.  The first trial ended in a hung jury, so instead of dismissing these ridiculous charges, they are going to go through it again, hoping to find enough conservatives at the line, willing to cross it to make a point.  A man faces jail time for living his CHRISTIAN faith while people who CLAIM to be Christian, refuse to do the things asked of Christians according to scripture.  That moves us just a bit closer to the line of no return, where excuses are made “we were just following the law/orders, he shouldn’t have done that/been here anyway.”  These folks, someone’s neighbors, will still think themselves righteous as the numbers of dead and lives destroyed mount. 

Mr. Trump regularly uses racial insults, and he and his tight group of cronies defend his comments as OK, what those people deserve  because they dared to challenge his appalling behavior.  Now instead of just 4 congresswomen of color, refugees and asylum seekers on the border, and immigrants of color, he is targeting other legislators of color and their entire districts too.  He throws in a few general Democrat insults so he thinks he can claim that this really isn't racism.   This resonates with his cult followers.  They don't want to be called out for the racists they are.  I don’t understand why.  It would seem their actions and inactions would indicate their pride in the positions they have taken and will continue to take.  Why not be called racist or xenophobic?   

Some of the susceptible  conservatives have crossed the line already, sending fake bombs to Democrats, actors and others he had been told to hate.  Shooters enter a variety of venues and open fire.  The survivors are told they should have no  voice in any analysis of what happened.  That might let some truth encroach on the story.  Consider how the Parkland students and Sandy Hook parents were treated by conservatives. 

We must keep as many people as we can from crossing the line into inhumanity.  This will not be easy because the media desperately wants to report every detail of everything these line walkers do and say with the statement that they think people ought to know.

Every detail?  Is that what we need to know?  Perhaps, we need to know that this person will not be permitted to spread more lies and that racism and white supremacy as well as the lies will be called out for what each is without quibbling over whether this was just a little racist or maybe not really white supremacy (even though all involved were white and the actions were against people of color).
Inciting violence against a targeted group is not free speech.  It is hate speech, troubling speech and needs to be called what it is, every time. 

This nation has already used a lot of “legal” means to keep people of color isolated from white people, often forcing people of color to live in neglected buildings with absentee landlords, to receive inferior services, to attend schools with limited resources.  Then, these people are blamed because they are poor, which means, they must be inferior people, you know, not worthy.

Sound familiar.  This is similar to the way Jews were forced into ghettos in many European nations, given access to few of the opportunities of the Christian population.  They too, were blamed for their poverty and lies were regularly told about them. 

Were the survivors of the holocaust correct when they cried “never again?”  If so, they and those of us who don’t want the hatred anywhere need to stand up all the time and shout it from the highest and lowest places, NEVER AGAIN  and NOT HERE!  Instead of blaming the conservatives specifically, we need to find ways as a society to keep them and others away from that line, the line no one should ever cross.

HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?

By Ruth A. Sheets

I just finished reading the book "The Seamstress" by Sara Bernstein.  It is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read.  I nearly stopped reading it numerous times.  I read it as an audio book and the reader's storytelling voice made it all seem almost normal by the end.  What was normal, the experiences of a young Jewish Romanian woman, a victim of the Holocaust. 

As I read, the old question kept surfacing, How could this happen?  How do whole groups of people lose their humanity while they are working hard to destroy the humanity of others?  Do the perpetrators realize they have lost their humanity?  Is there any way to let them know what they are doing in time to save them and everyone else from the horrors to follow?

In the memoir, a young girl, her friends, and a multitude of Jewish women are brutalized, starved, forced to work as slaves, deprived of all dignity, herded like animals because of religion.  Christians performed unspeakable acts on people they did not know just because they could.  They had the power of the state behind them.

The hardest part to read was just how slowly and methodically it all happened to Ms. Bernstein and her friends and family.  Pay was cut, jobs became harder and harder to find if you were Jewish.  Christian citizens of Romania and Hungary had no problem hurting, spitting on, and otherwise humiliating people they thought were Jews.  They restricted where they could live, where they could shop, where they could go.  The Germans had not even entered these countries when these actions were happening, so they can only be indirectly blamed for the way things got started there.  Much of the brutality was home grown in Hungary and Romania.

By 1942, life even in the cities became nearly impossible.  People were arrested and accused of spying, when they were actually charged with being Jews.  The military was everywhere and if they happened to shoot someone, well, that was only a Jew, so who cares.

The labor camps where thousands were driven by overwork to their deaths, then the concentration camps where millions were starved and murdered are so hard to imagine because there has been nothing like them.  The Germans and other leaders built upon each other to devise more and more horrific acts to use against their captives while they pretended they were just doing their duty.

I have read other memoirs of the Holocaust, but this one was the recollections of a woman.  Had I been born in a different time and place, it could have been I who faced the horrors of watching her sister shot in front of her, watching women beaten to death for singing, seeing the bodies of dead and dying women tossed onto piles to be carted away.  The author was 44 pounds when rescued in 1945. 

I know many conservatives don't like anything they do or say being compared with the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s in Europe, but I am seeing clear parallels.  We Americans are told "That could not happen here.  No one would allow it."  Having read this woman's story, I am not so sure.  It came on so slowly most people didn't even recognize what was going on until it was too late to do anything about it. 

A nebulous anger about jobs and working condition led Christians who felt entitled to good work at a decent wage needed someone to blame.  For centuries, Jews had provided fodder for their hatred.   How were Jews responsible, just by existing.  It was easy to target Jews in small communities, but more challenging in cities where there was more education and more religious mixing.  Begin limiting their rights, a bit at a time, make it difficult for them to earn money or have businesses.  Call them "Christ Killers," so you are excused to do whatever you want, in the name of Christ, whether you were actually religious or not.  See Jews as foreigners with no right to be in the country.

Some people in power in our country work hard to limit the rights of those they feel are beneath them, perhaps even inferior to them.  They have helped to create fear of people of color, a disdain of women, resentment of the poor - the takers, a belief that their religion is the only true faith and that one religion in particular is filled with terrorists.  They glorify the military, no matter what it does. 
They champion a kind of American nationalism that leaves many in our nation and the world vulnerable.

Immigrants are bad, except my ancestors "who came here the right way."  These folks are OK with incarcerating children for life, if they are of the feared groups.  They will deport the parents of
American citizen children just because they can, they are illegal immigrants, you know.  Racists and sexists are "fine people" and we have to protect our culture and its statues.

Remember, America has had its own concentration camps during World War II when more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were interned for being Japanese.  We still have Guantanamo which can hold a lot of people in a place that could easily be closed off to all inspection. 

Is this how it begins?  Is this how it happens?