On Becoming a Blogger

This is week two in my new world of Blog. Some friends have wanted to know, “How does a 90 year old geezer become a blogger?” Ah, a good question. I have been hollering and swearing at the computer for some years now, mostly writing books like “Ten Thousand Working Days” and “Wasn’t That a Time - Growing up Radical & Red in America”, both published by MIT Press. That led me to the e-mailing world of communication. I began to send comments on the news of the day to people I knew.

There are serious changes taking place that have made me think increasingly about the growing role of the Internet as a primary news source. Being a compulsive NY Times reader, I have noticed how the paper is shrinking not only in its physical size but in its news coverage There is also a noticeable disappearance of advertising, its basic source of revenue. I have come to believe we are seeing the end of newspapers, at least as I have known them in my long life. That would leave me with the computer becoming my primary news source. But hold on there. A few weeks ago I had an epiphany that opened my eyes to the wonders that this new medium can perform. Old computer hackers will certainly yawn as they read this. But anyway.

I attended a play on Broadway called “Eurydice” that is based on Greek mythology. In the world of the Greek Gods, Orpheus is known as the divine Lyre player. It was said that he played so beautifully that he made the rocks sing and the trees followed his music as he walked in the forest.

Orpheus and the beautiful Eurydice get married. While walking through the grass at their wedding a poison serpent bites her foot and she dies. She is in the Greek Underworld, which is sort of comparable to Christian Purgatory. Orpheus goes down to the Underworld to reclaim her and the headmaster says, “Okay, you can have her back on the condition that you do not look at her until you are back on earth”. Orpheus is delighted. Off the two of them go with Orpheus leading the way and Eurydice behind him. As they come near the end of the voyage home Orpheus, unable any longer to resist seeing his beautiful bride, turns and looks at her. Zippo, she is gone forever into the Underworld.

As a child I had been told that story by my father while listening to Offenbach’s Overture to “Orpheus in The Underworld”. Then, and now, I was never able to understand why he looked back at her, broke his pledge and lost her forever? I was sitting at my computer, so I thought, “Oh what the heck, why don’t I ask Google?” A long list of citations and explanations of what happened on the way out of the Underworld came up. “Orpheus got the sun in his eyes.” Thinking he was already out of the Underworld, which he was not, he turned and looked at Eurydice. And with that she was gone. Like in the Willie Nelson song “Tougher than Leather” where he sings, “Never shoot when you are facing the sun.” Too bad Orpheus never heard of Willie Nelson.

Another “don’t look back” admonition was uttered by a famous Black baseball pitcher, Satchel Paige. Long before Jackie Robinson made it into the major leagues, Paige was pitching in what was then called “The Negro Leagues.” In exhibition games Paige was striking out the major leagues greatest hitters, including Ruth and Gehrig. Paige’s quote, “Never look back he might be gaining on you”, was often used as an admonition to just go forward. Though I never heard Paige explain it, I assumed the “he” referred to was none other than the Grim Reaper. Unlike Paige, I think looking back is essential if we are to learn from our earlier mistakes. Eighty-three of my 90 years was lived in the Twentieth Century. I intend to spend a lot of time there learning its lessons.

Getting back to the Internet, I have been overwhelmed by the information that can be retrieved there. I spent hours looking up all kinds of esoteric questions. I thought, imagine if this had been available when I was in my late forties and going to college at night. All those hours digging in the stacks, I could have been having a beer at a local gin mill. It’s almost too easy. Now I wonder, can one really learn if it is made too easy? Is there any relationship between what is learned and how difficult it is to learn it? Another question for another day.

For some time now I have been sending out “missal’s” to my friends as a way of sharing my thoughts and getting discussion going. Recently three of my grandchildren in their thirties were visiting from the west coast. “Grandpa, you should do a blog. Whether what you have to say is current or from the early Twentieth Century, you can always connect it to the contemporary. We’ll help you set it up.” And so here I am.

As always “thanks Kate”. N H W Y. Love Roberto

The German Question Again

The Consequences of Fear
The German Question Again

For those who have read “Wasn’t That a Time” I am sure you will recall my childhood growing up in the world of German Socialists. With the emergence of the Nazi fascist movement in the twenties and thirties my “Papa’ became an active anti fascist who was predicting the eventual catastrophe that would befall Germany. What made it so painful for Papa was his powerful belief in the Germany of Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Mozart et al. And so I grew up watching my dear father’s most precious world turn into the darkest era in the history of western civilization.

All my life I have struggled to understand how the Germans could become the inventors of the Holocaust? I never really forget what happened in the Nazis years, but periodically there will come along another book or movie that causes me to start all over again trying to untie this knot of horrors by understanding how this could have happened? I am also in pursuit of any lessons to be learned that can be applied to our own politics here at home.

Rudolph Adorno did a study of the Authoritarian Personality following WWII that tried to identify the personality that totally accepts authority. This typology strongly fit the average German. “I was ordered to do it.” “I just go along.” etc. Remember the sixties and the bumper sticker, “Question Authority” That was a derivation from the Adorno study. (You can test yourself on the F scale. Go to Google and put in Adorno. The F stands for fascism.)

Two recent movies, “The Lives of Others” and “The Black Book” reminded me again of my dear Papa’s nightmare. In the latter the victim is added to the blacklist, thrown out of his job and is unable to find another. Everyone is in a state of extreme fear. “The Black Book” is particularly troubling as it explores the complexity of how people living under a Nazis occupation in Holland respond. This is a little closer to what happened here in the US in the fifties.

I have a personal history that demonstrates how fear creates conformity. In my FBI file there is a memo from J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI pinning a number on my name saying that “in case of a National Emergency Robert Schrank is to be incarcerated in a detention camp.” The summoning of citizens like the Hollywood Ten before the House Un-American Activities Committee was all part of the fear campaign. And boy did it work. It was part of the fear that McCarthy had unleashed and supported by a powerful part of the press that caused ordinary people to withdraw from any possibility that they might be tagged as “subversive”. Some went off to live in Mexico, Canada or Paris; others became apolitical, withdrew, or just “went along.” The latter is the objective of the fear.
It became clear that the first element of a fascist takeover is fear. The fear needed to be directed to a target. For a variety of historical reasons the Jews were chosen as the ideal target for releasing pent up energy of fear. What the Nazis added to the phenomena of fear was a unique kind of terror, as exemplified by Krystalnacht when the Nazi’s went on a rampage of destruction of every Jewish owned business in the country. That was the terror. For the average German that simply meant CONFORM to our anti semitism OR ELSE.

In the movie “The Black Book” the hated Nazi occupiers are clearly the “bad guys”, but even they are shown with some human qualities, like falling in love with a Jewish woman who is working for the underground resistance. And I am reminded how very ordinary Germans could tend the ovens.

The terror against those who did not conform brought the fear to levels of turning friend against friend, Christians against Jews, all against homosexuals, communists, and Gypsy’s. A whole nation living in terror and fear.

As I wander in this nightmare I am reminded of the McCarthy era and how a cloud of fear and foreboding seemed to cover the land. I knew at least some of the victims of that era. What comes back to me is the all-pervasive fear of “who would be the next.”

The present situation here at home has at least one of the symptoms of the fascist disease. That is the use of fear as a way to control the electorate. Having said that, I hasten to add that in contrast to Germany there is something in our anti authoritarian democratic tradition that permits the emergence of enough people willing to speak out in spite of fear. This gives me hope for the future. Yet, I believe the present wave of fear has had a profound underneath influence on the countries collective psyche.

So it is good to constantly be on guard against those in power who sow fear by accusing anyone who doesn’t go along as being unpatriotic or not supporting the troops or subversive. Just keep questioning authority, especially when they start lying and repeat the lies over and over until the average soul ends up believing it, like “the weapons of mass destruction.”