Time to Think

One year ago this month, I toured Washington DC with a group of teenagers to visit the
National Mall and witness Donald Trump be sworn in as our nation’s 45th President. I
summed up my experience with two words: hope and fear. I was inspired by the bravery
and patriotism of the young people I was traveling with, but I was fearful of the divisive
rhetoric employed by our president elect while on the campaign trail.  

I was moved to write about my experiences in a piece I titled Hope and Fear. I had no
idea where this writing would take me, but over the course of this year, I have written
thirty reflections. It seemed that with every frightening action the president committed,
the American people countered it with a hopeful action of their own. As this year of hope
and fear played out, I wrote. Sometimes at 2 am when I had to wake up to get ready
for school in a few hours. Sometimes on my phone in between homework and giving
the kids a bath. Sometimes the reflection would write itself in my head and I just had
to jot it down when I could find the time.

I wrote out of fear. I wrote to hope.

However, as the weeks turned to months and the months approached a year, I found
it more and more difficult to find the time to write. Nothing changed. The actions of our
president these past few months have been just as egregious (if not more) as the
first few months.    

What changed was me. What changed was my resolve. I thought to myself:

How many times can I write about basic human rights, dignity and American
values? Would my post defending El Salvadorans sound much different than
my post defending DACA? How do I address the comment about “shithole
countries” in a way that would have been different than my post about the
travel ban? What do I say about the #metoo movement that I didn’t cover
when writing about the president’s own misogynistic behavior?  

I was worn down and I didn't want to think about it anymore. I didn’t want to take
time to think.  

When I finally had the guts to admit this, I got scared. I realized that in the year of
hope and fear, fear was coming out on top. In fact, I wasn’t even afraid anymore.
I was fatigued. So fatigued that I became numb. Numb to things that frankly should
scare the shit out of me. Things that a year ago I would find appalling.

This feeling reminds me of a terrifying story I use in my classroom about 1930’s
Germany. The context of the story is obviously very different, but the theme is the
same. The story comes from a series of interviews done by an American college
professor named Milton Mayer. Mayer wanted to know how ordinary Germans could
allow for the rise of the Nazi party and the atrocities that later followed during the
Holocaust. In one interview titled No Time to Think he talks to a German college
professor seven years after the war. Here’s are some excerpts from the interview:

… we were decent people – and kept us so busy with continuous
changes and “crises” and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the
machinations of the “national enemies,” without and within, that
we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing,
little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose we were
grateful. Who wants to think?

The worst attack in 2017 by a huge margin was committed by a White middle class
American in Las Vegas. Who wants to think about that? Rather we are encouraged
to think about “national enemies, without and within”, like North Korea and
undocumented immigrants. Why?

… Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little
worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great
shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes,
will join with you in resisting somehow… But the one great shocking
occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you,
never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole
regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands,
yes millions, would have been sufficiently shocked… In between come
all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them
preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse
than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should
you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

There have been so many little steps and it has only been one year. DACA and
TPS (Temporary Protected Status) have been rescinded. Muslims from several
countries are banned from our shores. These things will not fix whatever it is the
president thinks they will fix, so one begs to question, who’s next? If we didn’t make
a stand at step A, when do we?     

...You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel
as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re
seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.” And you are an alarmist. You are
saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the
beginnings; yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the
end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end?

How many conversations have all of us had this year that sound exactly like this? True,
no one knows how this ends but should we sit by and watch or should we be an active
participant?

Many Germans sat by and watched and this is one reflection of the consequences
of that inaction.   

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them,
all rush in upon you… collapses it all at once, and you see that everything,
everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.
The world you live in – your nation, your people – is not the world you were
born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the
houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts,
the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because
you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed.
Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear
do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is
transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility
even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning,
but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago,
a year ago…  You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately,
what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us:
that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings… when, if one had
stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood.

We need to make sure that in 2018 we take time to think. 2018 cannot be the year when
we resign to the president’s policies of hate and fear. 2018 must be the year that we
stand up. 2018 must be the year that hope wins out over fear.

In 2017 I reflected. In 2018 I am asking you to reflect with me. To help me “take time
to think.”

In the first half of each month I am going to post a question for reflection. Anyone who
wants to “take time to think” can formulate a response to the question. In the second half
of the month I will post some if not all of those responses.

Last year as I toured DC during the Inauguration I wrote this phrase in my original reflection:

REMEMBER THE DREAM OUR FOREFATHERS HAD. REMEMBER THE STRUGGLES
OF OUR MOST VULNERABLE GROUPS. REMEMBER THOSE WHO FOUGHT TO
PROTECT THAT DREAM. THE DREAM IS YOURS. DEFEND IT!

Americans. It’s not too late. Yes, we are bombarded with messages of hate and fear but
everyone is not “transformed.” The hate and fear will only flourish if we do nothing.
If we don’t take time to think.