I have resumed reading Flight from the Reich, the important book by Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt. Picking it up again after over two years, I am struck by how much more pertinent it is now than it was in 2016. I knew this book was important then, detailing as it does the flight of the -- mainly Jewish -- refugees from Hitler's regime.
Although the situation today is different in most ways, the story still resonates with its sheer ugly brutality. Tens of thousands of Jews fled Germany in 1933 as it quickly became apparent that the new Nazi regime was a threat, especially to Jews. Others waited, thinking it would "all blow over." For many this delay led to tragedy.
Not to make too close a comparison, but our situation today in the U.S. is analogous in that -- like Germany of then -- we are split into many factions and sub-factions of interest groups, most very useful. But, still we are split, even fractured. My e-mail inbox makes this clear. Even the Presidential field is divided into many voices. (I am speaking here mostly of the left.) Now there is nothing wrong with diversity -- to a point. But an excessive number of factions leads to a dissipation of energy and focus.
The base illegitimacy of this current regime, weakened though it may be in some respects, cannot be adequately opposed under current circumstances. Those in the middle, on the left, and even on the right, should somehow maneuver themselves into a position in which they can join other thinking and right-acting people to stop the drift to the far right-wing fringes of our political circumambience.
