Not Knowing What To Do

On the eve of Rosh Hashana, the MAGA Right is whispering about an upcoming rapture

The older I get, the faster time goes; that's an adage I've heard from many through my life. But when someone reminds me that 1980 was 45 years ago, I'm reminded that only 45 years before that was the stirring rhetoric and hatred that led to the Holocaust of 1941-1945. Perhaps it's because most media from that time is in black and white, but it felt so much further away when I was young. It seemed like a distant memory - a cautionary tale that would never be repeated.

But I've just watched Steven Miller give an impassioned "speech" (i.e., rant) about how only people like him can create, have light, have worth, and have God on their side. Suddenly, 1940 doesn't feel very far away at all, and his words about awakening a sleeping dragon are brought into frightening perspective: the evil ideology that killed millions in the 1940's didn't disappear when the war came to an end. It simply went to bed and kept quiet until the murmurs of hatred came calling once more.

My mother, who passed in 2016, was fascinated by the psychology of Nazis and we had many books about their atrocities. I grew up reading them, dissecting them, and even considered a degree in Holocaust Studies once upon a time. We'd lost distant members of our Jewish family in those days, though the ancestors whose names I actually know came to the US in 1904 after escaping pogroms in Ukraine in the late 19th century. My great-great-grandfather Solomon allegedly walked from Kiev to Rome before getting on a boat to Ellis Island - whether my mother's stories were true or not, I cannot say, but she loved telling tales of how he lived in an Italian whorehouse for a time until he left.

There's a key takeaway from this tale: he was alone. If he had been a father then, would he have walked with all his children across Europe? I imagine he would. So, with the rest of the world closely watching "the season finale of the United States", why aren't we collectively walking away?

Part of this is the trouble of modernization. We are all so interconnected, perpetually available through online means, it feels impossible something as atrocious as an American genocide could arrive without our knowing about it well in advance. This, of course, is incorrect. Those who truly believe they have divine permission to exterminate an enemy no longer give a damn about getting caught. It used to be believed that the citizens outside of Treblinka didn't know what was actually happening there from 1942-1943, yet they literally smelled the burning bodies.

I imagine some of them suspected the worst, but none of them knew what to do. Paralyzed in fear, their inaction only worsened things. With the current administration's actions against immigrants, even going so far as to deport citizens and making more threats to do so, we're similarly embroiled. We are frogs in the pot, and the temperature's rising.

As a parent, becoming politically involved now has an extra layer of complication that didn't exist when I was in my 20's - I have a family. I have young children. I'm torn between wanting to march and put myself on the line and wanting to protect them. If I was only responsible for my own reputation and my own livelihood, I would be a better activist. I would feel less phony about writing letters and making phone calls if I could also walk in marches and physically stand for what's right.

But America has built itself in a way that now makes activism more difficult. If my health insurance is tied to my job, I certainly want to keep it. To keep my job, I can't leave work to protest. To keep my job and license, I can't get arrested. I'm chronically ill and always will be - that, I can accept and live with - but if my actions trashed our health insurance and one of my kids got sick? That would be my fault if we couldn't get them treated. Such is the disappointing cycle of answers that run through my head when I see people in other nations crying, "Americans, what you wish Germans did in 1940 - do it now."

I want to scream, "I can't! I want to, but I can't!" Not in a way that absolves me of responsibility, but in a way that recognizes how logistics don't allow for it without a hefty dose of sacrifice. I've felt the same as local violence against LGBT+ establishments escalated; friends from afar told me to fly my Pride flag openly and have no shame about my stance. That's easy to say when your home is rural and not surrounded by anyone else. But there are two homes in the street behind mine that proudly fly their Trump flags and have signs in the windows like "This house only recognizes 2 genders" and "Proudly protected by the Second Amendment". You bet your ass those people scare me. Why would I paint a target on my home if an emboldened MAGA drone felt compelled to act on Steven Miller's words?

If we were merely waving flags, there wouldn't be fear. It's the gun in the window that reminds me one of us is willing to kill for a cause. I'm only willing to die in defense. We are not the same.

What keeps me stuck here is a cycle of limits. I'm in debt to my mortgage and in debt to student loans. These two things make spontaneous flight preposterous. It's easier to say you'll move when you don't have to, but at what point do we stop kidding ourselves that the current course will reverse? My spouse and I are taking steps toward relocation, but those things take time. Getting certified in another country to do the job you already do is more complex than we thought it would be. We're lucky to have skills that make us assets. But my disabilities make us liabilities. I can only hope the former outweighs the latter.

Just this past week, I submitted a request for information about an international boarding school for my daughter so we might send her to a safer place while the rest gets figured out. If you'd asked me when she was born if I'd ever consider that, I would've guffawed in laughter. Now, it seems like a lifeboat that I know won't capsize while I search for more. We can't afford it, but we can hope, and all I have power to do in the moment is find as many options as possible.

I worry the whispers of "rapture" are code. I worry for Kristallnacht 2.0 and know the prime targets these days wear bright rainbows: scapegoats that are somehow more palatable to people who would otherwise consider themselves peaceful. Or offhanded remarks that become policy, like "involuntary lethal injection of the disabled", as Brian Kilmeade said with his whole chest on TV last week.

In this dystopian hellscape, writing and selling books feels sadly trivial. If it gets any worse, how will we get out?