Both of my grandparents got out. Both lost family to the Nazis.
While my grandfather warned me of the future (“Don’t think it can’t happen again; don’t think it can’t happen here”, “Don’t be the last Jew out of Berlin because you like your garden”), my grandmother was focused on the past. “The Germans did this. They saw it coming. We all saw it coming. If I saw it clearly enough to get out, they saw it coming clearly enough to stop it. They didn’t stop it. This is on them.”
If only I realized that she was predicting the future, too.
I am queer, and nonbinary, and, if you don’t honor my gender declaration, I am a lesbian, too. Plus, you know, Jewish.
I tell my friends that my life, my liberty, my rights, my family, is up for grabs in every election. Many don’t vote anyway. I don’t know what else to do, to say, to convince them that, really, this threat is real. This is life and death. They just don’t care. I try to tell them that when they come for me, that they are next. That their happy little lives cannot survive a Republican onslaught. That no one is pure enough. They think I am making a big deal out of nothing.
The Germans did that. The Republicans are doing this. And the non-voters are the German everyman who “didn’t see it coming”. But they do. They can’t not.
What? Are they going to wake up — like the Germans did after Hitler died — and pretend that they didn’t know? That they weren’t complicit? They know. They are complicit. The Republicans aren’t going to feel shame: they’re proud! They aren’t going to feign regret: they are going to going to chant that they will rise again. But the non-voter? The apathetic? What will they say?
Look... if 48% of the voters in your country want fascism, and 49% don’t… WE’VE ALREADY LOST.
If Trump loses, if he dies, if he goes to prison, someone else will come and build on his foundations. The recipe is too easy. The institutions are too fragile. And, Trump has given them the roadmap. Lie and deny. Lie and deny. And destroy.
And, we will lose. America will fall. It’s a question of when — not if.
And, I just don’t know what to do.
Because I don’t want to pack up and move to another country. My grandfather would say that I like my garden. I come from smart people who got out. And, I fear that I am not, and I will not.
When — not if.