“Lions, and Tigers, and Bears! Oh my!”
Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and Tin Man were overcome with fear as they had to journey through the dark, creepy forest. What were they afraid of? If Dorothy were back in Kansas, she might have been afraid of tornados, economic depression, and mean old Miss Gulch taking her dog Toto away. But in the fantasyland of Oz, the heartless Tin Man convinces the Scarecrow and Dorothy that the only thing they have to fear is… Lions, and Tigers, and Bears. Even as a child, when I first saw the Wizard of Oz on television, I could tell the Cowardly lion was nothing to be afraid of. It wasn’t the Cowardly Lion’s bluster that made them afraid, it was their fear that arose before they even confronted him.
Of course, The Wizard of Oz is just a fantasy, or considering that even Dorothy and her home in Kansas are all elements of a fictional story, The Wizard of Oz is a fantasy within a fantasy; the fantasy of Oz, within the fantasy of a young teenage girl who dreamed of going somewhere over the rainbow.
But even within fantasies, truth often hides. About the time this movie came out, FDR was proclaiming “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” I never really appreciated the significance of these words. Roosevelt knew that in Europe Hitler was using the fear of Jews to justify their persecution (and later annihilation.) By basically blaming all of Germany’s woes on a scapegoat, Germans need not blame either their government or themselves for the economic mess they were in. All he had to do was blame the Jews, and the people bought into the big lie.
The Germans who feared, hated (or just didn’t care), and eventually exterminated the Jews, never realized they were killing themselves and destroying their own country, not just because we are all human beings, but by focusing on some people being Jewish, they could obscure the reality they were all Germans like themselves. Indeed, the reason so many Jews moved to Germany was that previously Germany was one of the most progressive and enlightened modern countries where Jewish citizens could thrive alongside their Christian brethren. After all, they were all Germans.
That is, until a mad hateful fascist racist named Hitler came to power and exploited fear of the others—lions, and tigers, and bears—to seize dictatorial power.
When I was teaching Psychology to college students, there were two adjacent illustrated pages in the textbook showing that people fear the wrong things. In other words, we have little fear of things that are truly dangerous, like guns, driving automobiles, and climate change; but great fear for things that are unlikely to ever harm us, like sharks, spiders, and flying in a commercial airplane. Indeed, one Psychologist calculated that more people died in automobile accidents after 9-11 because of increased fear of flying.
Fortunately, you, my friends, have no fear of lions, and tigers, and bears. Or to put these fearful scapegoats into more realistic categories, Immigrants, Muslims, and Jews.
Columbus Day was in October. This used to be a popular holiday. Today, not so much. But what happened in 1492 changed the history of the world, and I’m not talking about Columbus discovering America in Spanish ships.
This past October, I went to Spain. I was an ordinary American tourist except ever since Trump won the last election, I have been seriously thinking about moving to Spain or Portugal. It was my financial advisor who suggested I visit a country before deciding if I want to live there.
In Spain, I saw some of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed. They were mostly cathedrals including the magnificent cathedral in Toledo and the Sagrada Familia (still under construction) in Barcelona. We also saw a far less ornate house of worship, the Jewish Temple in Toledo. I wasn’t surprised at the modest architecture; what surprised me was that it looked like a Muslim temple. It looked like a Muslim temple because at the time this temple was built, over 500 years ago, the Moors, not the Christians, were in control of Spain. The Moors were basically Arabs. Jews faced some prejudice but had opportunities to thrive in the Moorish empire.
Indeed, the Moorish empire produced one of the greatest minds who came from Spain, Moses Maimonides, a renowned author, medical physician, scholar, philosopher, and Jewish religious leader. Abba Eban said that Maimonides “is the most remarkable figure in post-Biblical Jewish history.” James Michener said Maimonides, “is the most brilliant man Spain ever produced.”
I remember having to teach a course entitled “The Psychology of Happiness.” Before Psychology became an experimental science, it was a branch of Philosophy. The oldest psychological ideas about happiness were written by philosophers. The text had lots to say about what the ancient Greek philosophers thought, but about a thousand years later, in Europe’s Dark Ages, only one learned philosopher made a contribution: Moses Maimonides, the famous Jewish physician. In other words, the only reason anyone in about a thousand years in Europe contributed anything to modern thought, was because then Spain wasn’t really part of Europe; it was part of the Moorish empire.
All this changed in 1492, when the Catholic King and Queen of Spain waged war against the Moors and finally defeated their armies. For thousands of years throughout history, one empire defeated and took over another. But how they treated the conquered nation made all the difference in the world. The ancient Babylonians and Persians didn’t try to eliminate the Jews living in the lands they conquered. The Romans conquered the Greeks but adopted many of the positive contributions of their culture. New empires thrived when they tolerated the religion and culture of the people they conquered, or moved there.
There were times the Jews in Spain were persecuted living in the Islamic empire of the Moors, but basically Jews thrived in Moorish Spain and were allowed to live as Jews. Quoting Abba Eban from his book Heritage, Civilization, and the Jews:
All in all, the degree of autonomous and uninterrupted cultural activity of the Jews in Spain arouses wonder. It contrasts sharply with the obtrusive, insistent invasion of Christian observance by Christian regimes that were to follow… But Islamic rulers showed no disposition to invade the private sanctuaries of learning and speculation in which Jews immersed themselves, and any replacement of Muslim by Christian rule was seen by Jews as a hostile turn of fortune.
But the King and Queen of Spain wanted to unite the Iberian Peninsula into one Catholic country. So they expelled, murdered, and/or tortured anyone who was either Muslim or Jewish. The Spanish Inquisition to “purify” Spain began in 1492, the same year Columbus set sail. The Spanish Inquisition was one of the darkest pages in world history, that is, until even its horrors were surpassed by the Nazi holocaust.
Today, both Spain and Portugal are tolerant of Jews, and refused to persecute them when Hitler was in power in Europe. Instead, they gave them sanctuary.
But the sins of the distant past can haunt a country for centuries. Having returned from Spain, I again picked up James Michener’s book Iberia. I noticed I highlighted some passages in yellow in the chapter on Cordoba, the birthplace of Maimonides. Basically, Michener, who loves Spain, said the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from Spain, didn’t just harm those who were Jewish or Muslim, but the fear, hatred, and intolerance of the other set back progress in Spain for hundreds of years:
I had always been much disposed to toward the Muslims, both in Spain and elsewhere…
Spain had called down upon itself a sad retribution when she expelled the Moors [and Jews]; special damage had been done to her intellectual and agricultural life, and from this she had not recovered.
As long as there were Muslims [and Jews] in Spain and making contributions to Spanish life, Spain stood at the head of nations, but coincident with the expulsion of the Moors [and Jews], starting in 1492 and ending in 1609, began the long decline which the country has not yet reversed.
Today America is being ruled by an evil, demented, ignorant moron who doesn’t give a damn about anyone or anything except himself and his unquenchable thirst for more money, more power, and more adulation from his cultish base. His target isn’t specifically Jews. More so, he demonizes Muslims, as when he declared no Afghans should be allowed in this country. But the main target of his fear and hatred is immigrants, particularly immigrants with brown skin from Central and South America with Spanish heritage.
As prices rise, and Trump’s popularity descends, he will do anything—regardless of how evil or un-American—to hold on to and expand his dictatorial power. He has demonstrated no respect for the lives of other human beings, and can’t comprehend why he, as President, doesn’t have the license to kill anyone he doesn’t like.
Trump will instinctively know he can’t defend his failed agenda and collapsing economic policies. But what he will try to do is hold fast to power by stirring up fear that Immigrants, Muslims, and Jews, plus other minorities who aren’t WASP-ish MAGAs, including gay people, brown people, black people, Asian people, intellectuals, women, etc. etc., are the ones to fear, and the ones to be expelled from our country.
It is already happening. ICE is Trump’s private army of domestic terrorists attacking immigrants. As for everyone else, we must all resist the human tendency to fear the lions and tigers and bears that lurk in the forest. The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself—and Donald Trump.
