Sunday, January 17, 2021

Insurrection

Ten days later and I am still boiling.  Who could believe that an event such as two Democrats, one a black Minister and  a young Jewish documentary filmmaker get elected to the US House of Represenatives in Georgia, of all places, and it gets so little play on the news.  You know why? We had an insurrection in the Capital and in the Capitol preceded by a treasonable  phone call trying to overthrow our election.

If you have followed my Missives over the last 4 years you saw these blogs:

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2020/11/what-happened-at-bonwit-teller.html

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2018/03/forewarned-is-forearmed-redux.html

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2020/08/making-fun-of-commander-in-chief.html

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2016/11/forewarned-is-forearmed.html


So hopefully this is a final farewell from this president who should be in prison … I shall live in hope.


Here are a couple of comments from friends and colleagues that resonated with me because of my German Jewish immigrant parents:


 “I left Germany when I was 4; born after war, my parents could barely speak about what happened, but I have studied my past -- I'm a German gentile after all- and I needed to understand what happened.  I know what Hitler did- race baiting, scape goating, distorting the truth, lying, using violence and pressure, demanding loyalty,  attacking the press-  using his loyalists like thugs- scaring people -- creating a cult- it's ALL there- ALL THERE! Plus he's INSANE—"


Another wrote: 

“This is a rare day when I’m powerfully reminded that I’m an (Jewish) immigrant & naturalized American citizen. I’m remembering the prizes I won in elementary school in the 1940’s for my Americanism essays. Can this be made right? Was the idealism with which my immigrant parent imbued me misplaced? Today I had to wonder.”


Susan Glasser ended her excellent New Yorker piece on “Trümperdämmerung” this way: "Out of all the books I read this year—and I read many, stuck at home during 2020’s endless quarantine—the one that resonated perhaps the most was “Those Who Forget,” an account by the French-German author Géraldine Schwarz of postwar Europe’s, and her own family’s, not entirely successful effort to reckon with the crimes of the Second World War. It made the very convincing case that, until and unless there is a full accounting for what happened with Donald Trump, 2020 is not over and never will be. I still don’t want to remember, but I know that forgetting is not an option, either."



How about I end with a bit of news that is more positive. Lee Rosenbaum, wrote about the collateral damage to the 300 works in the Capitol that are desginated as art in her blog called, “Scooprose, Culture Grrl” in the Arts Journal on the subject of: https://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2021/01/the-architect-of-the-capitol-assesses-the-damage-our-nations-art-architecture-if-we-can-keep-it.html



The New York Times and others picked up the story a bit later.  Happily, there was no major damage to paintings and sculptures t including those in the Rotunda.  For once in my life, I was happy that the marauders did not understand art and thought it unimportant.  If there had been, we would have had another black eye from the international community where there is a greater appreciation.


When we look for the seditionists, we must remember that the criminals were not only those who invaded the Capitol: Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Josh Hawley and their cohorts who tried to overturn the election should be included, not to mention their leader, djt.



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