Dear children: An open letter
As a child of the fifties, a teen of the ’60’s and an adult now pushing 78, I cannot get my head around what is happening in this country. One sixth of the country doesn’t believe what their eyes showed them about January 6th. United States Senators who won’t concede that the current president won fair and square. United States Representatives, and Senators, who are either dangerous liars or dangerous lunatics, people who were trapped in it on January 6th in fear of their lives, now brushing it all off. Republican leaders who won’t lead but only obstruct, betting our democracy on their capturing majorities in the next election. What would my professor of political science and master’s degree advisor say if he were still alive? He’d know what we should do. Or would he? I just don’t know. And that’s the point. I always felt like I knew. Now I don’t.
Then there’s the hard-headed or empty-headed flagrant racism against blacks, Jews, and Asians. Running up on an elderly man in his driveway and beating him almost to death? Knowingly crafting legislation to effectively deny the vote aimed at people who would vote against them–blacks, Jews, and Asians. Commenting on pervasive racism and the nation’s ability to not see it, Maya Angelou said, “If someone tells you something, believe him.” Now I have to come to terms with the fact that domestic terrorism groups have to be believed, that it is more dangerous not to take them at their word than to ignore them. Is it me, the always moderate father of yours who believes those groups need to be stamped out, even stomped out? In saying that I know too that doing it like that endangers the democracy that cradled me, your grandparents, and their parents? You need to remember that I could still go to Russia and Romania and find the houses of my grandparents, that my grandparents were born to parents whose first language was not English. Just as we’re getting comfortable, so to speak, in this land of ours, we have to ask ourselves is “comfortable” dangerous? If I hadn’t made a promise to my wife never to do it , I’d have a shotgun to protect the house and a handgun to protect us on the streets. That’s me? As Charlie Brown’s friends would say, “Good Grief!”
I ponder possible remedies. Should those of us who are left as moderates become serious activists, doing some of the things those of the far right claim we are doing anyway? Should we be in the streets, standing in front of houses, finding aggressive ways to cut the net of social demonism? Will history look back and say sadly that the tactics of Black Lives Matter were the tactics that if adopted by “democracy matters,” groups were the right tactics? Do we have to walk up to a neo-Nazi or Qanon moron and actually kick him, or her, in the groin? This is nuts. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Don’t forget that. One can make an interesting parallel comparing the decisions we have to make now to those the leaders of Athens had to make when confronted by Sparta. Athens, the gleaming and glorious democracy, lost big-time.
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.