NAILS ON CHALKBOARDS

     Remember that sound? Remember how shoulders went up at that sound, how people cringed? Nerves were shocked and yet, we seem to have forgotten it. White boards and smooth markers, and now smart boards and we have forgotten the sound, that warning sound that told us we were doing something wrong and had better shift something.
     Well, now my shoulders are up by my ears and sleep is never forthcoming for all I see and hear in my mind and in my inner eyes is the horror of demagoguery and hatred alive and well in my country, supported by no others than by a president and his blind and  sometimes not so blind followers. Always a teacher and always a reader, visions of 1984, Brave New World, It Can't Happen Here? by Sinclair Lewis in 1935, numerous novels and non fiction books, The Man in the High Castle - and the list goes on. I think of the units on the Holocaust in my classroom, of the plays the eighth graders put on including a scary one where it WAS happening here and I wonder how we are now at the point we are.
     Have we all lost our ability to think and to see, to truly see what is going on around us? Have we had to reach this point where the United States has grown backwards, returned to these days - "a long and shameful history in this country of barring immigrants based on where they came from. Starting in the late 19th century, laws excluded all Chinese, almost all Japanese, then all Asians in the so-called Asiatic Barred Zone. Finally, in 1924, Congress created a comprehensive “national-origins system,” skewing immigration quotas to benefit Western Europeans and to exclude most Eastern Europeans, almost all Asians, and Africans."  Have we, as Jews, forgotten how our people were turned away at the very gates of entry into this country and sent back to their deaths? How have we forgotten that and worse; how have we approved the actions and the election of one who suborns this hatred and prejudice?
    My kids out there, I plead with you to think, to feel, to hear the scratching on the blackboards. Hear the screams and the cries, of outrage, of hurt, of terror, and see the protests at the airports and other points of entry and worst of all - see how people so quickly fall in line and follow these prejudiced and illegal rulings. Just following orders, were they? Have we not heard that before? Have we not grown out and above that? Well, obviously not so I wonder, what would have happened, what would have been avoided if in 1885 a German immigrant named Trump would have been turned away due to the prejudice at that time to Irish and German immigrants. Would we have been spared the Trump we now have? This same Trump whose ancestor had to pretend he was Swedish rather than German?
    And yet there is hope, perhaps a bit of dulling of the screeching on the boards. Two judges had the moral courage to block the deportations and to halt this right now. There are those who are questioning its legality for  discrimination in this area was specifically banned via the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It will be taken up in the courts and shamefully so will have  the Justice Department of our own country arguing to defend this horrific and shameful order, issued no less on a day that commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz and International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On that same day, Trump released his hate filled and hate propelled Executive Order, yet another one in his demagogic manner or ruling. And this on the same day when he "disremembers" to mention Jews as victims of the Holocaust. Really? Truly?
     Are we to be shamed by the whole world as Trudeau of Canada says he will welcome the refugees? Are we to garner more hatred from the people of the world as we turn our backs to them and on our own history? From the NBA to Google, to families split apart to people who worked for us when we were fighting in their land - where does it stop? Where? San Diego, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, LA, Portland, Seattle, Dallas, Newark - are we going to have a civil war over this and other issues that flow forth from this hate filled office of the President?
     "And this is the forbidden truth, the unpleasant taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices." Joyce Carol Oates
     Are we going to become active participants to this horror? Are we forgetting that hatred does not end? That it extends itself into all corners? Now no Moslems from seven countries - and notice not from countries where Trump has business holdings, not from Saudi Arabia from whence the 9/11 hijackers originated - that Christians from there can enter, so religious preference is alive and well in the small and evil minds that profess to be Americans. Where will we be - the Jews - who have the somewhat dubious honor of being scapegoated throughout history and the millennia and do not think that Ivanka and Jared will be any better off. Court Jews go down with the rest. Never forget that. Never!
     A columnist writes "Mr. President, please remember: This is a country built by refugees and immigrants, your ancestors and mine. When we bar them and vilify them, we shame our own roots. "My every nerve screams out that we must stop this, halt it in its tracks. In all honesty, I am no fan of Moslems or Islam and feel that it has done  much to wrong the world, but I would stand today with the protesters for this is simply wrong and selfishly, I also know that it does not stop here. It never does! Nor can we condemn a whole group of people for the sins of the few. We need to extend hands, teach and educate and for heaven's sake - no, for all our sakes - learn to get along. Not go along with these hateful measures. Not go along with a man who is now being called out as mentally off balance, as suffering from malignant narcissism. I have long stated that he has a mental condition, that he needs to be examined, that his papers need to be forthcoming. I have long shown how he is following every step of an ambitious demagogue, from deflecting attention with the Big Lie as he steals another precious right from us, as he governs by dictat and fiat rather than by our system, as he bullies and terrifies people and as grown men succumb to his influence and control and contradict themselves with his every shift.
     Please, all of you out there, remember what you should have learned in school, what history has taught us, what we have learned about propaganda and its insidious effect on us. Think and think and think. Hear those scratches. Feel those shoulders and backs tense up. Do not close your ears and your minds for these scratches will be heard and felt, insistently and harmfully. These terrible actions, these terrible feelings, drip down through our society and these smaller hate filled people are to be found all over and it is all over that we must resist, be it the nasty person in line to the nasty person ruling the Village. Why can we not use our humanity rather than our savagery?
    May the good Lord watch over us now for if ever we were in need of guidance, it surely is now. I, for one, am frightened and I believe there are many who agree with me and that same feeling. This is not the America we have come to expect nor the America that is true to its guiding and founding principles. Shame on us, shame of those who go along. Your turn is next for history tells us so.
   Two applicable quotes from related article.
   “Anyone who says #WeRemember or #NeverAgain while sitting silently while the US closes its doors is full of sh-t,” he tweeted Thursday.) 
   "it was easy to draw comparisons between the fate of those aboard the St. Louis and, fewer than three generations later, the indefinite suspension of refugees from Syria.
The current situation in Syria is “probably the easiest example in the world today of people being massacred by a political tyrant,” Hathaway said. “That we would not read the tea leaves of history and understand that the people fleeing are the enemies of our enemy is beyond comprehension to me.”
  To do nothing, to say nothing, to go along with this and even partake of it, is to be guilty of it. You have just agreed to ethnic cleansing according to race, religion and national origin. Now go look in the mirror and see if you like what you see.