Never Again is Now

At sunset today, 4/23/2025, Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel) begins. The best way I know to honor the 6 million Jewish people (and approximately 11 million human beings in total) murdered in the Holocaust is to live the lessons and warnings that the survivors told us, and those still with us continue to tell us: Never again.

Right now, there are still 59 hostages held in dark tunnels by a genocidal terrorist group that has a written creed of wiping out Jews. Said group invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, massacred over 1,200 human beings--men, women, children, and babies in their cribs and parents' arms. They raped people. They massacred multiple generations of entire families, and decimated entire kibbutzim communities. They shot pets dead as a punctuation mark to show that they could. They massacred young people at a peace-centered music festival. The took 251 innocent people hostage, including men, women, children, Holocaust survivors, and BABIES. And all this they justified in their minds and hearts by "othering" Jewish people, just as the Nazis did.

Never again is a warning that means: never think it can't happen again. Never think it can't happen here. Never LET it happen again. Never LET it happen here. Human beings are capable of great acts of selfless love and altruism, of heroism and moving mountains for each other. But human beings are also capable of staggering cruelty and barbarism, and all it takes is othering. Dehumanizing the "other". This is how our own current POTUS rose to power the first time, talking of bans and walls. And the second time, talking about invasions and about immigrants "eating the dogs", which was a lie, but it is what he does: he others, he capitalizes on fear and hate as fuel. Hate is his fuel.

So the only way I can honor the 6 million of my own people and the 11 million human beings in total who were systematically exterminated by the Nazis while most people in Germany looked the other way since those "others" were dehumanized in their minds and hearts is to SPEAK UP when I see it in my own time.

There are 59 of my people right now who are still being tortured and held captive in dark tunnels by a barbaric, ruthless terrorist organization that has othered and kidnapped them. They've now been there for 564 days, since that terrible, tragic day I described above, October 7, 2023. LET MY PEOPLE GO! And in my own country, the POTUS has kidnapped and disappeared hundreds of people to a concentration camp in a foreign country, and is refusing to follow Supreme Court orders, first to turn planes around in the sky, and now to bring at least one specific person back. The hundreds of people he has kidnapped to date have had NO DUE PROCESS, so anything the POTUS and his followers say to try to justify why he did this is completely irrelevant--none of his "othering" is relevant: those kidnapped and sent to a concentration camp in a foreign country have not had due process! BRING THEM BACK!

The best way to honor the victims and survivors of the Holocaust is to learn the lessons of it, to learn what othering and dehumanizing leads to, and to listen to, and heed, the warnings--the tireless, consistent warnings of the survivors: don't think it can't happen again. Don't think it can't happen here. Silence helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. Silence is complicit. Speak up.

#NeverAgainIsNow

#BringThemHomeNow

#LetMyPeopleGo

Break the Glass

Whew, boy howdy. I saw the fascist's Easter message posted on a friend's Facebook page and I was hoping it was satire, but no, it was all too real.  How can anyone read or listen to anything the man says and not recognize that he's, one, insane, and, two, a clear and present danger to this country?  How can congress just turn a blind eye to the countless ways he has eggregiously violated our constitution in this term alone?  They are not only silent and not doing anything to stop him, they are actively enabling him by doing things like trying to impeach federal judges who attempt to uphold our constitution and rule of law by ruling against this lawless dictator.

Everyone in the majority party (repugs) in Congress who are not acting to stop this man are themselves now treasonous traitors to the United States of America.

It's up to us, you guys, us rag-tag, crazy quilt of humanity known as the American people, us and our courts are all we have left because our wise, awesome, and powerful constitution is mute and powerless words on parchment paper unless WE ensure it is upheld.  Congress is sworn to do so but, as I've already covered, the majority party is a bunch of TREASONOUS TRAITORS and yes, I'm back to all caps again, which I know I've been engaging in far, far, FAR more than usual since the fascist got back into power but in case of emergency BREAK THE GLASS:  use all caps, dammit.  Take to the streets, call Congress, call Congress again, and again, take to the streets again, and again.  Show up at town halls, show up at your representatives' offices, protest at Tesla dealerships and wherever DOGE shows up, fly an American flag upside down (again:  in case of emergency, break the glass--if there was ever a time to fly the American flag upside down, THIS IS IT).

This insane, sociopathic, malignant narcissistic, treasonous traitor, cruel fascist dictator and Russian asset cannot remain in office, he should be impeached, convicted and removed.  Short of that, at LEAST he needs to be reigned in by the courts so that he, for example, stops disappearing people with ZERO DUE PROCESS to concentration camps in a foreign country.  Will the repug Congress ever wake up and smell the overthrow of our constitution, rule of law, separation of powers, democracy and entire government?

Asking for my country.