I must confess that it has been a struggle for me to decide what to write this week. In fact, this morning, I found it more engaging to consider cleaning out my catch-all kitchen drawer (ugh) instead of deciding what I wanted to write about! Bottle can lids, old spatulas, the detritus of years of cooking seem more appealing than considering this last week and a half in the U.S. of A!!
Today is Sunday, and today on CBS Face The Nation, West Virginia’s Republican Governor Jim Justice made a strong petition for United States’ citizens to see themselves not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans first! Americans who vote and who respect majority rule in voting! That is a democracy! That is America!
I know that I, like the majority of Americans, have been waiting with baited breath, disbelief, and dread regarding the follow-up to the insurrection last week! What may happen? Will there be more violence? Will the 50 states continue to suffer insurrection? Who knows? Let us just pray that reason prevails and domestic terrorism dissipates and goes away! PLEASE GOD!
Retired former Republican Governor of California, film star, idol of many who revere The Terminator and his sometimes violent films, Arnold Schwarzenegger, spoke out this past week, and his comments are well-worth listening to. Schwarzenegger, a naturalized American citizen, was born in Austria just after World War II. He related that his family had been involved as Nazis during the war and that the insurrection in Washington on January 6th, reminded him of the shameful Kristallnacht, the 1938 Night of Broken Glass, where, at the behest of Adolf Hitler, Nazi Brown Shirts rampaged throughout Germany destroying businesses and homes of many German Jews, eventually leading to the fascist dictatorship, the horrible death camps, and the disastrous world war. A single Strong Man and authoritarianism at its classic worst!
The wonderful U.S. Marines always speak of Semper Fidelis, “Semper Fi” (always loyal), loyal to the U.S. Constitution and the Rule of Law. Unfortunately, this is not true to our own home grown “Brown Shirts” or domestic terrorists! Timothy McVeigh, one such domestic terrorist, cited Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (and thus to tyrants) on his t-shirt when arrested after he bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people (including many children) in 1995. It is probably true also that the insurrectionists at the U. S. Capitol last week did not see themselves as John Wilkes Booth or Timothy McVeigh.
They say that history repeats itself. Such actions as those last week led to the Fascism of Hitler and the murder of Abraham Lincoln. Is that what we want for ourselves and our society? I pray not!