Additional references at end of this post.

A year ago today, January 6, 2021, was the Pearl Harbor warning for the future of our democracy and our republic.  Pearl Harbor was far more than just a single day in December, 1941.  There was history preceding it, which few bother to learn; and WWII after….

I ask you to take the time to really get to know Jan. 6, 2021, what preceded and what followed, and not only from your own bias, and reflect on how you, personally, are a most integral part of your and our future as a nation and society.  Personal opinion: divided into ‘tribes’, as we are, we cannot survive….

Personally, I’ve always trended towards optimism about the future – it’s just my nature.  2022 forward is a big struggle.  We have been well taught to despise each other; to believe facts are fake and vice versa, on and on.  There truly are more ways to communicate less.  For just a single example: we no longer have a local newspaper, which was a forum for sharing opinions.  Now we can isolate into social media groups and pretend there is no other valid opinion.  I’ve begun lobbying for a community conversation about public schools, as we did in this school district in 1999.  It succeeded then; understandably, there is little interest at this moment.  I’ll keep suggesting this, as I can.  It worked.

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The two photos below were the first and last of 32 pictures I took while witnessing the Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  You will note at the upper left in both photos the television time stamp of the photos: 2:59 and 4:06 p.m., Eastern time.  Personally, this is where my education began – about the unraveling of democracy in 2020.  Hindsight, there was plenty of evidence before, too, but it was easier to ignore.

January 6, 2021 2:59 p.m. 1st of 32 photos of Insurrection

I don’t recall any other year where I paid attention to Jan. 6.  Except for 2000, when the Supreme Court decided the election of President on Dec. 12 (Bush v Gore), once election week was over in November, life simply went on.  I was only vaguely aware of Jan. 6.  It was simply a procedural day.

Last year differed, and the insanity continues.  Here’s my post for January 6, 2021.  About noon that day, I decided to tune in, having little clue about what was about to transpire.  I spent much of the afternoon witnessing a national outrage and tragedy play out in front of my eyes.  Those photos burn Jan. 6 in my memory, as the explosion of the USS Arizona on Dec. 7 reminds me of my uncle Frank Bernard’s death on the ship.  Jan. 6, 2021, was Americans vs America.

I watched orchestrated unrest which turned out to have been planned and coordinated in my own and other states on that day and has continued nationwide ever since.  Jan. 6 will, in my opinion, live on in deserved infamy, as Pearl Harbor has all these years.  This time, though, our battered ships, our enemy, is the heavily documented invasion of our national Capitol.  The threat to our own democracy is now much greater than it was Dec. 7, 1941.  We will survive the pandemic.  Tribalism in all its manifestations is much more of a threat.

January 6, 2021, 4:06 p.m. last of 32 snapshots I took of the Insurrection

THE LOCAL COMPONENT: This post emphasizes  Alley.  Alley was a local insurrection leader from my town who I accidentally came to know in 2017.  To my knowledge she never went to D.C. but was a very active spear carrier here in Minnesota, a year ago, she apparently was an organizer of demonstrations at our own State Capitol on Jan. 6.

Her stage name was and I think remains “Alley Waterbury” and she was spotlighted in a long news article.  Here is the article, Alley, as printed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune Jan. 16, 2021.    It is worth your time.  Disclosure:  I know Alley, but I haven’t seen or heard from her since our brief acquaintance in 2017.

Back in 2017, Alley was an occasional visitor to the coffee shop I frequent.  I’d fix our very few conversations to about mid-2017.  She was probably in her 40s, grew up and lived in my town.  When she came in she visited with others who I didn’t know personally.

At one point, she expressed concern about sex trafficking anticipated at the 2018 Super Bowl, scheduled for Minneapolis.  It seemed a legitimate enough concern.  I did know a teen at risk of exploitation, so I paid attention.  That was Alley’s entree.

Politics entered.  I recall she was upset about some past demonstration which apparently had happened at a Republican Congressman’s home in our community of Woodbury.  I knew nothing about it.  I didn’t and don’t know the issue or the players.  To my knowledge the congressman lived and lives in Woodbury but represented another MN congressional district for a single term: 2017-19.

Apparently she knew him.  Her complaint triggered a very unpleasant memory for me.

I had her e-mail address.  I wrote her a single e-mail, pointing out to her an outrageous incident directed at me some years earlier at my home, after which I called the police. The incident was a late night ringing of our doorbell.   No one was at the door, but I  discovered fresh fecal matter on our doorstep.  A few hours before the incident a signed letter of mine, critical of the local Republican state legislator, had appeared in the local newspaper.  I don’t recall what the letter was even about.  It was just a criticism…that ended with that fresh s**t on my doorstep.

This was the last contact with Alley.

Apparently her activism increased resulting in her 15 minutes of notoriety in the Minneapolis paper a year ago.

Who is Alley, really?  I suspect I’ll never know.

I would guess there are plenty of similar stories out there.  The zealots, as Alley, are probably small in number, but committed.

She, and the other supporters of the insurrection and disinformation, and ultimately power and control, live as they will with the outcome they desired and facilitated a year ago.

*

The leader of Alley’s pack, then President, was and remains a modern-day “snake oil salesman” of the very worst kind.  He benefitted by contemporary technology in a way that no old time snake-oil salesman could ever dream of.  He was and remains truthless.

Snake-oil is still and will always be, snake-oil.  It depends on suckers who’ll buy it, and there apparently are plenty of them still around.

My opinion: The  insurrection didn’t succeed a year ago, and the only way it will succeed going forward is the complacency of the rest of us.

Our job is to prevent the outrage of 2020-21 from ever happening again.

It’s in our court, totally, one person, one action, at a time.

AN ENDING NOTE:

PREDICTING OF THE FUTURE is, I think, a fools errand especially when it comes to assessment of others feelings and beliefs.  But looking forward, and back, is important, nonetheless.  Witness, for example, the well-dressed woman strategically seated at the coffee shop Tuesday morning, wearing a very stylish designer baseball cap with the words “Defend the Second” as its sole text.

Or the Christmas card, mailed Dec. 19, 2014, which I’ve kept all these years, from a lady my age living on a farm, some years deceased, “I pray for our country often.  It is in sad shape!”  I knew her well, thus what she meant.

The U.S.  a nation of unparalleled wealth.  Still, there are great numbers of impoverished and disadvantaged people, lots of them, but we too often pretend they are not our problem. We are such an immense nation, and so wedded to individual “responsibilitity” and “freedom” (for ourselves), that we are individually and collectively blind.

Yes, I see this in my own life, daily.  The temptation is to say bad things happening are not my problem.

We have been flirting with our own destruction for years.  We have chosen the course by our own demands.  We deceive ourselves.  We give meaning to the word “hubris”.

Last year was a horrible year, politically unprecedented.  (The NYT editorial for Jan 1, 2022, linked below, points out that 1891 was somewhat analogous. That was 131 years ago.)

The past provides learning opportunities.  Our years long friend, Annelee, now 95, spent her first 21 years growing up in Germany, from 1926-47.  She was a small town Catholic girl and saw the rise of Hitler and the Nazis first hand.

We have talked many times of her experiences there, and analogies to today.  She has truly “been there, done that”.  It can happen here.

The Nazis had a lot going for them in the Germany of the 1920s and 30s.  There are thousands of books and movies about that history.

Their leaders were brilliant.  Strategy and tactics and organization were strengths.  And belief.  They knew Power and how to exercise it in what was then an advanced society.

They freely talked of a 1,000 year Reich and believed it.  They took over everything; the ticket to success was to be a Nazi. And conveyed their belief to their people, amplifying grievance and resentment of clearly defined others.  They had lots of friends, including in our own United States.  (Personally, I’m 50% German nativity.)

But the 1,000 year dream unravelled quickly.  Nazi Germany had, essentially, a 10 year run, till about 1943.  May 8, 1945, it was all over.  Germany’s enemies helped it recover.  The Nazi leaders – those who lived – were subject to judgment. The soldiers and the others who survived went back to their ruined lives, to start over.

Yes, it was a short run – this pretension of glory.  We seem to be slow learners.

One of my relatives went back to visit one of our German family farms in 1954 and took a few photos.  Here are two.  Even with help, recovery from WWII was a long term process, even in rural areas which escaped the bombs and invasion.

Marie Schrup with Busch relatives in rural Germany 1954.  It is easy to overlook the fact that 1945 did not end the war for ordinary Germans.  Recovery took many years and lots of help through programs like the Marshall Plan.

Shrine at Busch farm in Germany 1954

I visited this same farm in 1998.  The grotto was still there.  It was a prosperous operation. Four of the sons of the farm were in WWII, all came home alive, none told their stories – so are the memories of war for those who get caught in it.  Our friend, Annelee, lost her Dad.  He refused to join the Nazi party and was drafted and it is believed he died in Russia near the end of the war.  So is the fruit of war….

Near 20 years ago, during the then-young war in Iraq, I saw a quotation attributed to Hermann Goring, second only to Hitler in the Third Reich.  The quotation (below) was so remarkable that I thought it must be fake, and set out to authenticate it, if possible.  Ultimately, I found the quote in the very book in which it had appeared in 1947, from the American psychologist who visited often with Goring in his prison cell at Nuremberg.

The quote is one pertinent for our present day.  Here it is:

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia, nor England, nor for that matter, Germany. That is understood, but after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simpler matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

(Quoted in Nuremberg Diary, p. 278, Gustave Gilbert, Farrar, Straus & Co., 1947. Gilbert was a psychologist assigned to the Nazi prisoners on trial at Nuremberg.  Goring later killed himself in his cell; the fate of the other power maniacs in Nazi Germany is well known.)

Our fate as Americans rests in our own actions.

Are we up to the challenge?

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES, IF YOU WISH:

New York Times Editorial Jan. 1, 2022 NYT Editorial Jan 1, 2022.  Highly recommended by our friend Annelee, who grew up in Nazi Germany is the new book “Midnight in Washington” by Adam Schiff.  Commentary by Heather Cox Richardson January 2, 2022.

My related post from Dec. 31 here.

Within the next few days, before Jan 20, I will be doing a post with individual thoughts about politics ahead in 2022.  Please check back.   Readers can easily subscribe to this blog (see below)

COMMENTS (more may be at the on-line section):

from Jeff: Excellent essay Dick.  I find the “opposition” very fragmented.  Discord and disunity and complacency amongst the wiser, truer side is sadly a weakness.  In my business career I found  Americans in my industry (logistics, farming, agribusiness) to be usually complacent.

Earlier this afternoon I stopped at an area supermarket to pick up an essential food in my daily menu: bananas.  This gave me an excuse for coffee, and to pick up one other needed item.  Just an ordinary day, Dec. 28, 2021.

A gentle snow had begun while I was in the store – the big fat flakes gently falling, perfect for artists depiction of “over the river and through the woods”.

My car was covered by perhaps an inch of snow, enough to sweep, but no rigor required.  The man the next car over was sweeping his own car, and as I reached mine, he did my car as well.

“Thanks and Happy New Year”, I said.  I had no idea who he was: just one more stranger in my town, as I also was in his.

The action took all of a minute.  Off he went, as did I.  Just another day in our town.  A memorable small act of kindness, just because….

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This singular act outside the grocery store got me to thinking back over the last days, weeks, months, years.  As I write, I am visualizing a list of small, unnecessary, memorable actions by others that have made my life, and the lives of others, better.  One small – maybe even tiny – deed at a time.  Mostly they are people I’ve never met, will never even see again.  Their only name is their action.

I’d invite you to think about such actions by ordinary people in your own life that made your life better in 2021.  I guarantee you, it won’t take long, and you’ll be surprised what arrives on your own list of good deeds given to you, not the opposite.  If the spirit moves, and you know who they are, let them know how they contributed to your life, probably without their knowing.

*

As I write I think back to an assignment I was given by my friend Judy Maghakian in the early summer of 2019.

The assignment came before we left on a two week trip via AMTRAK to Seattle, ending in Davis CA.  She was hosting a summer workshop at Macalester College, and she asked me to talk on the topic Servant Leadership to young people mostly from other countries.  Our trip is highlighted in yellow below.

I didn’t know what “Servant Leadership” was, except I thought it must be about actions by ordinary people in living their ordinary lives.  (There are books on the topic, if you’re interested.  Just type “servant leadership” in your browser.  I really haven’t read any of them before or since….  I have experienced this kind of leadership often.)

My focus wasn’t on prominent people, rather on people whose daily service is truly at the micro level – person to person.

So during the trip I very simply started to list things that I had experienced by ordinary citizens in the places we visited: a kind porter on the train; some passengers who were birdwatchers, enroute to an event; two native Americans engaged in good works back home in Oregon…on and on.

Not long before the trip I had touched base with my friend, Frank Kroncke, who has a compelling story going back to the peace movement of the Vietnam era.  I decided to ask him if he’d be willing to be co-presentor.  He agreed, as did Judy.

Together, I think we had an enriching hour of engagement – certainly nothing fancy, but fancy was not expected.  Servant Leaders by my definition are not fancy people, by and large.   Here is what I wrote at the time; (Servant Leadership is the second half of the commentary.)

Do your part to make 2022 a Happy New Year.

My neighborhood Dec 28 2021. about 2 p.m.  Directly across the street is the tree (below) that is lit every night. It brings brightness every time I see it.

Nov. 30, 2021

COMMENTS (more at end of post)

from Fred: Good suggestion for the new year! Overall, I have so much to be grateful for, that small acts of kindness and compassion might well be overlooked.

Have you noticed how often people go out of their way hold doors for others? The practice has grown more over the years. Of course it is possible that I started doing only after maturing. That was about four years ago so maybe I’ve got it all wrong.

Happy New Year, Richard!

from David: Thanks Dick, we will continue another year of peace work. Thanks for your support.

from Barry: Same to you Dick. I hope there will be some good news for this messed up country of ours.

from Rosa Maria: Lovely post, Dick.  May we all do good deeds to others and appreciate the ones that other do for us.

from Judy:  Dear Dick, you are a remarkable communicator and person.  Thank you, thank you.  God’s blessings to you in the New Year.

Rev. Lowell Erdahl died Dec. 14 at age 90.  He was very well known in Minnesota.  Details were in the Dec. 19 Minneapolis Star Tribune, which can be read here: Lowell Erdahl obituary Dec 19 2021.

Lowell Erdahl, with his twin brother, Arlen, at a Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers event Nov. 15, 2009.

My particular connection to Rev. Erdahl was in the area of peace and justice.  As his obituary states, “throughout his life he was an advocate, champion and leader for peace and justice.”  He “walked the talk”.  Lowell joins a long list of peace and justice leaders who passed on in recent years.  Their legacy is now the responsibility of those of us for whom they were mentors.

Those active in the movement for peace and justice will likely recognize the names of some of Lowells colleagues who have passed on.  These are leaders I came to know personally.  My apologies for any inadvertent oversights of others who I missed.

It’s our turn, and our children generation, to carry on.

R.I.P. in the last 20 years :   Lowell Erdahl, Hank and Dotty Garwick, Joe Schwartzberg, Lynn Elling, Leslie Reindl, Mary Rose Goetz, Mary Lou Nelson, Mary White, Don Irish, Lyle Christianson, Veryln Smith, Wayne Wittman, Bob Heberle, John Braun, Tom Atchison.

Your additions to this list are solicited.

Today, hats off to Uncle Frank Bernard, who, at age 26, was beginning his 7th year as a sailor on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7, 1941.  And to his shipmates as well who also went down with the ship.  (I had the privilege to meet Frank in person, just five months before his death at Pearl Harbor.  I was only a year old, but no matter….)

Frank Bernard USS Arizona, undated

Happy Holidays!

Three years ago Dec. 4, 2018, they wheeled me in to ‘slice and dice’, and I came out some hours later the proud owner of a new aortic valve in my heart, compliments of a bovine, to whom I’m forever grateful.  60 years ago at about this date I finished the last class for my college degree.  There’s a lot of water under that bridge, somewhere around 21,000 days in all, “practice” at being an adult!

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These days I typically leave the house before sunrise, and November 30 I was greeted by a newly decorated tree across the street:

Nov. 30, 2021

I hardly ever rhapsodize about lawn decorations, but this tree spoke to me, symbolizing the season.

*

For a number of reasons, 2021 has not been a “normal year”.  I have some recommendations for you this season and forward:

1.  Ken Burns has partnered with PBS and others to form a new web presence.  I encourage you to at minimum visit the new site, Unum (as in E Pluribus Unum, “out of  many, one”), explained at Ken Burns home page.
2. John Noltner has just published (September 2021) his third book, “Portraits of Peace, searching for hope in a divided America”.  There are 31 short chapters, each about 6 pages, each generally about one person John interviewed somewhere in the U.S., each chapter deserving of personal reflection and discussion in such venues as book clubs. A bonus: John uses these chapters to reflect on his own experiences basically when the 2008 recession forced him to change his well-established career.  Check out the book, and John’s website, here.  The website has much information of value.
3. I happened to be watching TV on November 21 when the news shifted to the tragedy around a parade in Waukesha WI, in which 5 were killed and 48 injured.  For a long while, all that was known was that a red car was involved, and that the driver was in custody, but unidentified.  I will always remember the law enforcement official – the resident expert – commenting several times on why people do such evil things.  As I recall his mantra, the usual back-story reasons in the aftermath most often comes to be one or more of the following: Greed, Power, Hate, Revenge or Escape.  Of course, usually we immediately transfer this diagnosis to the alleged perpetrator.  It occurs to me that a good exercise for each of us at this season is to reflect on these words as they might apply to us, individually, now or at any time in the past.  It may be a bit uncomfortable, but, I think, useful.
4. Finally, in looking through some archival material this fall, I came across a booklet from June, 1955, a commencement address at Hamline University in St. Paul.  The speaker, John Cowles, was taking a stab at predicting the future for the graduates.  Cowles, publisher of the newspaper that today is the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, was 56 years old, a graduate of Harvard many years earlier, and predicting the year 2000, which would be about the future retirement age for most of the graduates.  Here are his interesting remarks: John Cowles Hamline June 6 1955.  How do you see 45 years from now (2066) in our U.S. and world, when today’s college kids are about retirement age?  This isn’t an idle exercise in these unsettled times.

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Here’s my most recent photo.  At right is college grandson Parker, my birthday kin kid, albeit 62 years younger.  In background, hardly visible, is Cathy, and at left is Grandson Ryan.  Photo by my daughter and Parker’s Mom, Joni.  Thanks and Merry Christmas.

Thanksgiving 2021

COMMENTS (more at end of post):

from SAK:  Many thanks for that especially the address by John Cowles to the graduating class of 1955.

He got some things right (population explosion, dwindling resources, communication watches . . .) &, as he himself predicted, got other things wrong! I think it was Niels Bohr who said “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future”.  What I really liked was his warning about a possible nuclear war. Feels like we are closer to such catastrophe than at any time during the past few decades. He declares himself an optimist at the end of his address – I wish I myself could be as optimistic. Perhaps he would have toned down his optimism had he also predicted the climate crisis & the growing tensions between the US & China as well as the internal divisions poisoning so many countries.

Still I liked his address so much I converted it to a Word document – not as easily done as one would think assuming all the technological advances that he predicted!

Towards the end of his speech, he said:

“I hope that those of you who share my belief that the attainment of universal, enforceable disarmament is the most pressing problem of the second half of the 20th century will spread the doctrine with missionary zeal. I hope that those of you who are not convinced will continue to study and ponder the problem, always keeping in mind the alternatives.”

Surely the alternatives are too horrendous to contemplate but instead of universal, enforceable disarmament we have an escalating arms race with ever newer gadgets like drones, hypersonic missiles & cyber warfare. Friedrich Schiller got it right: “Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain”.

Most of us will remember John Lennon’s Imagine (“Imagine all the people living life in peace” etc) well I also remember that the same John Lennon was shot dead on  December 8^th, a day like today, and for no good reason.

But this is a special season & I have put up a few decorations & intend to be Merry!

Merry Christmas & a much improved New Year to all,

Recently we’ve been flooded with important cases relating to the rule of law.  I’d name a few, but for certain I’d miss somebodies important one.  Take your pick.  They’re all important, and they all demonstrate how complex “law” is in a country of 330,000,000 people and a long history of some sense of democracy.

In the even you’re interested in “law” generally, even if not part of the legal community, I have a resource you may at minimum simply like to browse.  Perhaps something within will peak your interest.

Some time back I was browsing some potential archival materials for an organization I’ve long been part of, now called Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), previously called United World Federalist Association (WFA).

The group was founded in the wake of the founding of the United Nations in 1945.  WFA first organized in 1947; it changed its name in 2004.  Its focus has always been on the need for a system of laws in which a diverse national and global society can at least function without going to war, or dictatorship.

In a box I found a 52 page pamphlet published in 1959 by the American Bar Association, as a series of ideas for discussion of the American legal system at the time of Law Day, proclaimed by President Eisenhower in 1958.  (In 1958, the U.S. population was approximately 181,000,000, slightly more than half of todays population.  Neither Alaska nor Hawaii were states in 1958)

I pdf’ed the booklet, which is presented here in four parts (my scanner was being irritable).  But all the pages are there, and I invite your taking the time to take a look.  Here are the pages. (cover – 17) Law Day Am Bar Assoc 1959; (pp 18-24) Law Day (2) Am Bar Assoc 1959; (pp 25-43) Law Day (3) Am Bar Assoc 1959; (pp 45-52) Law Day (4) Am Bar Assoc 1959.

The booklet is written for a general audience, for use in local events.  My favorite short essay is “Law in Treehouse World”, p. 49.

How are things the same in today’s world, compared with 1959?  How do they differ?  And what difference does that make?  These and many other questions are worthy of exploration.

POSTNOTE:

Coincident with my idea of forwarding this booklet, a good friend, a retired Priest and long-time activist Harry Bury, sent to me and several other friends his summary view of contemporary issues.  I simply submit his writing as his thoughts, food for thought and debate.  His thoughts are shared with his permission.