It Can Happen Here (a rant)

Hello Friends,

I'm not exactly sure what this seed is, but the leaves of the tree it came from look a lot like smallish maple leaves. There are a number of such trees across the street from my house.

I shot this with a Panasonic Lumix GX7, using frame sides for phantogram processing. The overall width of this was around 2 inches.

Over the past couple of years I've tried to avoid waxing political, but this is one of those must speak moments for me, say something or regret not having said something. If you're new to my image-of-the-week emails and don't want to be reading my thoughts on the current political climate, probably good to just move on and ignore the rest.

As a pre-teen-ager I recall spending way too many nice after-school afternoons indoors, having to go to Hebrew school. Our Hebrew school teachers were unimaginative middle aged men. Their main qualification was they spoke Hebrew. I can't say I gained much from those long hours. I learned to sound out Hebrew characters, but not to understand common words or speak Hebrew conversationally. However one thing that keeps coming back to me, especially now is this: they told us to never to say "it can't happen here."

To be clear, "it" is a repeat of the holocaust that brought enslavement and death to millions of Jews and other minorities. "here" is here in the United States of America.

So what is happening here? We have a major political party, Republicans, led by a one-term, twice impeached megalomaniac, that claims it's for law and order, the American way of life, and most of all, for freedom. Many of its candidates openly deny that Biden won the presidency. They project onto their opponents, Democrats, that they cheated to win, and so that justifies them cheating back. And we can be confident that they will deny the validity of their elections unless they win. Once they're in power, where does that lead us?

Watching playoff baseball games last week at least a few times I saw an ad showing hordes of dark skinned immigrants flowing across the border. A scary voice described them as stealing our jobs and security, chewing up our tax dollars. A photo showed an immagrant who they warned had raped a 3-year old girl. The clear message was 'this is what you get with Democrats running things'. It was produced by Citizens for Sanity. According to an LA Times article on Wednesday October 19 (Section 1, page 2) Citizens for Sanity is tied in with the America First Legal Foundation, and founded by its president, Stephen Miller, Trump's own chief propagandist.

Democracy is on the ballot this year. Women's rights are on the ballot this year. LGBTQ rights are on the ballot this year. Your freedom is on the ballot this year. Within a few short years we could see facism and authoritarian control take hold in the United States. It can happen here.

Regards,

Barry Rothstein

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