Losing hope, fearing atrocities to come

Flying objects and a startled deer

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“It Can’t Happen Here,” the book by Sinclair Lewis that Ken wrote about in two excellent columns last week, is widely thought to have been modeled on the antics of Huey Long, the Louisiana governor (then, at the same time, U.S. senator) who ran his state as a populist and crime boss.

Long was assassinated in 1935, the same year “It Can’t Happen Here” was published and during the same period Nazi agents were running a propaganda campaign within the United States to keep it out of the coming war.

That story — of Nazi infiltration of U.S. media and politics in the pre-war period — is told in Rachel Maddow’s book, “Prequel,” that I just read. It’s called “Prequel” not only because it presages the armed conflict between the U.S. and Germany but also because the story, which details irresponsible and sometimes seditious acts performed by prominent Americans, resembles what is unfolding now.

What Germany was then, Russia is now — a dangerous European regime that some Republicans choose to promote against the interests of the United States.

Then, some Republicans expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, while calling President Franklin Roosevelt a communist and obstructing his efforts to contain the Nazi threat.

Now, some Republicans praise Vladimir Putin, while calling President Joe Biden a socialist and making it hard for him to assist Ukraine in repelling the Russian invaders.

The story of American isolationism prior to World War II is well known, but Maddow goes beyond it, into the history of Nazi agents on American soil and their American collaborators. Men such as Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Father Coughlin and several members of Congress (including New York’s Hamilton Fish) not only admired the Nazis, they helped German agents run a widespread campaign to keep the U.S. out of the war.

I wasn’t a fan of Maddow’s MSNBC show, because, like other cable news hosts, she often used mundane political activities to build bonfires of exaggerated outrage. 

Her writing mimics her broadcasting — breezy and overly informal, with the occasional vulgarity and snarky aside. The text feels dumbed down.

Still, she has a compelling story to tell — one that I knew very little about. Did you know, for example, that multiple congressmen in the 1930s illegally used their franking privileges to mail out reams of Nazi propaganda at taxpayer expense?

After the U.S. entered the war, the collaborators largely succeeded in covering up their activities. They were rich and influential, and they were helped by the monumental distraction of the war. Afterward, weary Americans wanted to move on.

“Prequel” isn’t a blueprint for what is happening to us now but, as with “It Can’t Happen Here,” is meant as a warning. Our democratic systems are vulnerable. Our leaders are untrustworthy. People are easily fooled.

I’ve lost faith in the last few weeks that President Joe Biden will be re-elected. I hope he wins, but I now believe a second Donald Trump term is more likely than not, and my thoughts have shifted to resistance.

“How bad will it be?” is the biggest question on my mind.

Will Trump, for example, be able to implement “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” as he has promised, using federal agents to track down millions of undocumented immigrants and imprison them in camps until they get deported?

Will Americans stand by while these people are seized and jailed and expelled from a country where, in many cases, they have lived for decades? Will we allow thousands of families to be torn apart?

I think we will. We have already condoned so much from Trump and his accomplices, and we seem to be as capable as anyone of allowing atrocities to occur in our name.

Spotted

While Bella, Ringo and I were taking a quiet, early walk in Cole’s Woods a couple of weeks ago, a large bird jumped heavily off a branch over our heads and flapped away. It was dark like a crow, but looked twice as big as a crow. It didn’t fly like a heron, and I had no idea what it was, but now I wonder whether it was a turkey vulture. A couple of days ago, I shot the photo below from our lawn, thinking it was a hawk. But my phone identified it as a turkey vulture. Is that accurate?

My iPhone says this bird, which glided over our lawn a few days ago, is a turkey vulture.

Walking along the Feeder Canal recently, we stopped to sit on a bench, and Bella spotted this deer scrambling silently along the steep bank on the opposite shore. It seemed to feel me shooting photos, because, as soon as I started, it scrambled out of sight.

A deer hightails it for cover recently along the bank of the Feeder Canal.

Finally, we spotted a more colorful and easy-to-photograph sight in downtown, the Pride flag hanging from the city’s flagpole in City Park, near Ridge Street. It looks good.

The Pride flag is being displayed on the city’s flagpole in City Park for June, which is national Pride Month.

‘Pale Fire’

I couldn’t help but think of Vladimir Nabokov’s brilliant, mysterious novel, “Pale Fire,” when I read about the dead waxwings found near a window outside Crandall library. It’s hard to say exactly what “Pale Fire” is about, especially if, like me, you read it about 40 years ago. But it is centered around a poem, which begins like this:

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure of the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff — and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.”

The poem goes on for many stanzas, and footnotes to it, which begin as brief commentaries to its text, expand to many pages each and soon are telling their own, separate (but is it entirely separate?) story. If this sounds intriguing, check it out, and if you haven’t read anything by Nabokov, other books and short stories by him are less elaborate but equally wonderful.