State of the union, early November 2022

I'm very disturbed about the state of our nation.?This is no longer the country I grew up in.?But, what we're hearing publicly is about the same as what I've been hearing privately for many years.?I can "pass" in both Jewish and gentile circles, and have regularly heard racism in both Jewish and gentile environments, as well as plenty of anti-Semitism in gentile environments.?Now anti-egalitarian entities have gathered up courage to say publicly what they said in private years ago, and are gaining in power and following.?Despite the likely illegality of such activities as armed, masked men watching ballot drop boxes and photographing those using them, I don't see Federal or state authorities doing much about it.?Why is this? I'm afraid for the consequences.

I think the problem goes back well over 100 years.?Let's start more recently. In 1945 Churchill, FDR and Stalin agreed that the only way to de-Nazify Germany would be a military occupation lasting "at least 50 years" (this is a quote from one of Churchill's WW2 history books).?In reality, the occupation lasted 44 years, since our current military presence in Germany is NATO-based rather than based on de-Nazification.?That 44 years proved moderately successful - not completely successful, as we know, but long enough for the Nazi generation to largely die off and a more enlightened form of political education to be instituted in Germany.

Reconstruction in the US south began in 1865 accompanied by a Federal military occupation of the South.?Corrupt as it often was, Reconstruction did its job incompletely; not for 50 years, nor even for 44 years.?The hung Presidential election of 1876 was Reconstruction's undoing, thanks to the backroom deal in which Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican candidate, agreed to withdraw Federal troops from the South in exchange for Democratic support for his election.?This "Compromise of 1877" placed Hayes in the White House, the Federal troops were withdrawn, and Reconstruction was ended.

The problem was, the Federal occupation of the South lasted only 11 years, and Reconstruction ended while many Southern Confederate luminaries (e.g., Nathan Bedford Forrest) were still in their prime years.?They remained active and vocal, and were responsible for the creation of the KKK as well as instituting other nefarious institutions and activities not limited to voter suppression and lynchings.?In this way, the South was not effectively "de-Nazified", if you will forgive the comparison.?The fires of racism were not quelled to the extent that they were in postwar Germany.?Retrospectively, it's easy to see that FDR and Churchill were right.

As an aside, I find immense irony in Putin describing his actions in Ukraine as "de-Nazification" especially since Ukranian president Zelensky is Jewish.?Not that Putin's logic has ever been anything we can rely on though!