aggienaut | History, Repeating Itself (Reply)

   There's a particular day in English class in ninth grade I've found myself thinking about a lot lately. For whatever reason Ms Lesowitz asked a question that prompted people to express opinions on nazis. Many of my classmates took the opportunity to loudly exclaim their hatred of nazis. And yet. I remember looking around the room, and having this eerie chilling feeling that they weren't exclaiming their hatred for nazis because they thoroughly understood all that they stood for and rejected it on principal -- rather these rightious upper-middle-class American students were patriotically declaring what they knew was right and patriotic to declare, to evince hatred of the group that they knew it was right and patriotic to hate. In short, while hating nazis is the right answer, what they were doing I suddenly saw could very well be coming from a very nazi place, could be evidence of inclinations towards the very thing they were declaring to hate. That was Orange County, a very republican place, its very likely that a significant proportion of those students are in fact now "MAGA."

   Two or three years later I was in another English class, in summer school, making up for classes I'd missed during my year in Sweden. We were asked to write what we would do if we had been in Nazi Germany. I have no doubt most of my classmates wrote about what great partisans they would be. That's a noble thought, but trying to be realistic I wrote that I'd probably do what my actual ancestors did and get the heck out of there as soon as I saw which way the wind was blowing.
   Now I find myself here in Australia while America well and truly seems to be descending into fascism, and I really can't rule out there won't be some big crazy completely avoidable war involving the United States as the aggressor in the next year or two, and it feels like history is repeating itself.

   I just submitted my application for Australian citizenship.