PANDEMIC DIARY

THIS IS WHERE I DRAW THE LINE
May 24, 2021

I was riding in my car to and from chores when I turned on NPR. Whatever the segment, I had arrived mid-broadcast, mid-sentence. In a mere moment, I realized that the subject matter was a retelling of a difficult time from a difficult place. The person retelling the story conveyed a pall of dark memories in literal moments of time. And, without my having any context regarding who the is, where she is from, what happened and why, I was struck in my heart by the words to follow.

She retells that “he” asked her, “Does it hurt to die”.

Later, she noticed he would not keep away from his sister and was kissing and touching her to her mild annoyance. She recounts asking, “What are you doing?”.
”If I die I want to make sure I remember her”.

I teared up hearing the trauma through the eyes of a child’s experience. How fear to the uninitiated is all-encompassing. How experience to a young person is not particular, rather universal. They know one thing: what is happening to them in this moment. That becomes their world. Later their assumption. Then their burden.

I am thinking of all the moments in my life that I am still dealing with, and even sometimes still addressing. But, my world was still safe within its conclave of family. True, my mother was a sneaky, self-centered manipulative narcissist. But, she bathed us, cooked for us and ‘kvetched’ incessantly enough that we felt a non-threatening uniqueness of oddity. I still could ‘go out and play’. Nothing was ever falling from the sky and going ‘boom’. Noises did not infer impending doom or an urgency to run and hide in shelter.

There appears to be a world-wide fascination with authoritarians. We are witnessing a time when the odyssey of subverted corruption is surfacing and what lays beneath the surface of public political debates and partisanships has bubbled to the surface for all to see. There is no longer a model government. They are all…and have always been…corrupt. Those in government have always sought to serve themselves. When it came to their own political survival, policy was up for grabs. Integrity never seemed to matter except for the few. The concept of ‘servants of the people’ never took hold. The difference now is that what existed before, I believe rarely without exception, has become more entrenched, more institutionalized, more politically acceptable; more blatant and shameless; and, more popularly and commonly accepted than ever before. In other words, imminently threatening what remains as our democracy

I remember a pleasant happenstance that occurred to Adele and I. We were in Berlin on the day of their Marathon. We decided to become part of the crowd and position ourselves near a turn in the run where we could get a good long glance of the racers. Standing by us at the barriers was a gentleman with whom we started up a conversation. What’s relevant here is that we were staying in a portion of the city that was designated as East Berlin prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It has since become gentrified with young singles and couples with children and is really quite lovely. The gentleman went on to explain that his father, who is still alive, opines for the days before Berlin’s unification. He liked it under the old totalitarian regime.

We asked him what about authoritarianism his father liked? His answer was that like so many of his peers, they liked the certainty. They did not have to stand on line for jobs. They were given jobs. They did not have to worry about having a place to stay. They were given an apartment. They didn't possess much, nor could they go far, or did they have things to do and enjoy. Yet, he was satisfied. They didn't worry about capitalism. Decisions were made for them. Steady as she goes. Limit choices. Believe in the voices that tell you what is going on. No cares.

In now famous experiments from the 1960’s, Stanley Milgram, a Yale professor, questioned why people follow authoritarian figures. His first conclusion he called “The Power of Authority”. “Too often, orders from people with positional power can overrule individual judgment. Psychologist Stanley Milgram’s landmark study showed how people mindlessly obeyed an authority figure. They followed his commands to administer potentially fatal shocks to a person in the next room whenever he gave a wrong answer to a test question. Despite the victim’s cries of pain, pleas to stop, and complaints about his heart condition, the vast majority (82.5%) of research participants obeyed the experimenter. While hearing the screams from the person next door, these participants kept pushing the button to deliver severe shocks increasing to the level of 450 volts. Milgram (1974) concluded that most people will follow an authority figure’s commands because our culture reinforces us for obedience.” Later experiments conducted by psychologist Jerry Berger (2009) discovered that ‘testers’ could be easily persuaded to continue shocking to near fatal levels even after hearing subject (victims) cry out in agony. [All participants were actors and the pain performed).

Then there was “The Power of Limited Information”. “Without other reliable sources of information, they were forced to rely only on the claims of the authority figure. Is it any wonder that authoritarian leaders seek to cut people off from valid information? They censor and discredit the press as well as the academic and scientific communities so that people are left with only their authoritarian propaganda.”

Another critical stage in the development of authoritarian rule is “The Power of Avoiding Personal Responsibility”. In the obedience segment of the test, “the experimenter told participants that he alone was responsible for any adverse effects on the person subjected to shocks. The participants were just “following orders,” able to avoid personal responsibility because they were obeying the authority figure.” We see this occurring now in government, where legislators are falling in line with a dominant figure to mask their complicity and hide behind the idea that someone else is in charge.

A final reason is explained by the study of tyrannical regimes during WWII. Historian Timothy Snyder (2017) recognized how often authoritarian leaders prey upon our fears. They will discredit facts, deny credible news and abuse sources of information, finally drawing the public into false webs of conspiracy theories that produce a toxic mix of angst, polarization, scapegoating, and chronic cultural positions and anxieties that potentially undermine a civil, free society.

We are at a critical vector in our history. Republicans seem to have been planning for this for decades. Their hateful, racist policies have been with us since Reconstruction and the ‘Southern Strategy’. I am thinking of ways to re-engage and start marches. But, what I absolutely am committed to is “to not tolerate fools”. They are not my friends. They are not who I wish to socialize with despite our past, despite what other good qualities they may possess. I am using my voice, not to apologize or compromise, but to repudiate.

THIS IS WHERE I DRAW THE LINE!