Rise up

I’ll have a much longer account of this later, but I wanted to say this: I’m in Berlin, and I’ve been going through the layers of history: there’s a place I saw where Nazi basements were buried under the Berlin Wall, for instance.

Here’s my short point, though: I’ve read account after account about how the Nazis and then the Stasi harassed and tortured dissidents, and they’re things that the US currently employs. Against terrorism suspects, of course, but that was their justification too.

Germany, sixty years after the war, is still grappling with how to confront and acknowledge what happened during Nazi rule, and almost twenty years after East Germany essentially disintegrated, they’re openly stuggling with a set of much fresher wounds from a dictatorship of a different flavor.

We haven’t even stopped torturing people yet.

So, from Germany, I encourage everyone to go throw some money to stop this. Whatever your taste is: Amnesty International, Obama, whatever. This political season I’ve given until it hurts and every time I touch another memorial I feel like I didn’t give enough.

One thought on “Rise up

  1. JenV

    I sure never thought I’d be living in this America.

    So I’ve been giving until it hurts, too, in the hope that America can wake up soon from this very, very bad dream.

    Do you read Five Thirty Eight? I imagine you do what with the whole BP association but if you’ve ever mentioned it, I missed it. I love it; whenever I feel nervous I give more money, then I go look at their shiny graphs and pie charts and feel a lot better.

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