In addition to all the scary things going on in the world, there are a lot of amazing and beautiful things going on in each of our lives, if only we stop to appreciate them. In honor of those many awesome things I offer this "hymn" to celebrate the end of this day, "Dream of the Return," by the Pat Metheny Group.
I've seen this iconic photo periodically. It has always inspired me. I keep a copy of the image file on my desktop, and I periodically look at it and feel intense emotions. Until today, however, I didn't know the story about the man refusing to salute Hitler. I didn't know what happened to him.
[caption id="attachment_34346" align="aligncenter" width="792"]
Employees of the shipyard Blohm und Vow from Hamburg gathered for the launch of the training ship 'Horst Wessel' and demonstrate the Nazi salute with the raised right arm. One worker in the right half of the picture denied it and crosses his arms in a defiant gesture - also a kind of resistance. The name of the worker is August Landmesser., 01.01.1936-31.12.1936[/caption]
Here is the opening paragraph of the story behind the photo from Wikipedia:
August Landmesser ([ˈaʊ̯ɡʊst ˈlantˌmɛsɐ]; 24 May 1910 – 17 October 1944) was a worker at the Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. He became known as the possible identity of a man appearing in a 1936 photograph, conspicuously refusing to perform the Nazi salute with the other workers.[2][3] Landmesser had run afoul of the Nazi Party over his unlawful relationship with Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman. Later he was imprisoned, and eventually drafted into penal military service, where he was killed in action.
The Wikipedia article
continues on and it is a story that is jarring, inexcusable, horrid. This is what can happen when bullies bring terror up a group (or nation) of people, causing them to form a destructive tribe. There are millions of stories of the Nazi regime, but August's photo allows him to visually inspire the rest of us. If only most of us had the guts and integrity to stand up to 1% of the social pressure and the danger that he faced. I wonder whether this photo was used in the case against him, or if his sin of falling in love with a Jewish woman (Irma) was more than enough evidence for his persecutors. Bullies don't need much evidence. Actually, they don't need any evidence.
August's non-salute proves that one can stand up to massive social pressure to succumb. The salutes of everyone else
in this photo is evidence of something else, what what? Is it that most people are sheep? Is it that most people stop thinking when under social pressure, thus acting out Hannah Arendt's idea of the banality of evil? Or did most people, at some early glimpse of trouble, decide to stop thinking? Or did most people knowingly live hypocritical lives day after day, laying low, passively hoping that the entire thing would wash over and that they and their families would emerge intact, though compromised?
This photo of August Landmesser inspires me, reminding me that nothing I ever face will compare to what he faced. If he could stand up to the Nazi's, I will never have any excuse for failing to speak what I believe to be truth, no matter how upset people around me are getting. August Landmesser's photo is an excellent reason for being the first one in the room to stand up and tell the mob that you disagree with them.
Matt Taibbi, writing about Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States:
No matter how interesting a book he or she is able to write, any author who admits to looking out at the world and seeing only “victims and executioners” needs psychological help. Unfortunately, Zinn in this respect turned out to be a pioneer, presaging a generation of comic-book thinkers who understand things in binary terms, forever preoccupied with cramming people in neat categories of oppressors and oppressed.
Such mental habits are the fashion now and will definitely put you in a bind on Thanksgiving. How can I eat turkey and stuffing with a smile, when Columbus massacred the Arawaks? When the English forced the Wampanoags off their land and made many convert to Christianity? When Lincoln told Horace Greeley, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it”?
How? Maybe because you’re more than three years old, and don’t need fairy tales to be real in order to enjoy dinner with family and a football game?
Taibbi's article is "Thanksgiving is Awesome: In reply to the haters. Happy holiday, everyone."
On a more serious note, I read Zinn's book when I was a teenager and it was a much needed shock to my system, given that I had, to that point, been exposed to a steady stream of textbooks and teachers who argued American Exceptionalism. I agree with Taibbi that both of these approaches are simplistic.
Caitlin Flanagan is one of my favorite writers. She just turned 60 years old, which means that it's time to reminisce, celebrate and try to make deep sense of things.
[Y]ou have been on this Earth for a really, really long time. I have a photograph of myself at age 3, standing on the docks of Cork Harbor, about to sail to New York. When I look at the picture of that small child on her sturdy legs in the foggy past, I don’t feel any connection to her. The photograph looks like something I would discover after many days on Ancestry.com. It looks like a snapshot of my own great-aunt. There’s a reason the photograph looks like it’s from another time. Because it is from another time; it was taken more than half a century ago. How can I be in a photograph from that long ago? The math makes sense, but my own life doesn’t.
This is an excerpt from a much longer discussion. Michael Shellenberger is discussing San Francisco's homeless problem with Joe Rogan. One of his conclusions is the well-intentioned attitude by many liberals that all homeless people are purely victims and that they cannot be blamed for any of their behaviors, including their uses of dangerous drugs.