Fear and Responsibility

What strange times we live in!  In the midst of this chaos around all of us changing our lives, I decided to watch the first episode of “The Plot Against America”, based on the 2004 book by Philip Roth.  For those of you who aren’t aware of this program, it is the story of what would happen if hero aviator Charles Lindbergh beat FDR for the Presidency in 1940.  The America that results has much in common with America now in 2020, which is probably why HBO decided to present it.  Brilliant programming!

The story is told through the eyes of a lower middle-class Jewish family living in the Weequahic section of Newark.  What unfolded was a melancholic hour--for me-- when I suddenly remembered that my mother graduated from Weequahic High School in 1937.  As I watched, the stories she had related to me as a child about growing up in this part of Newark, suddenly took shape for me in a way I hadn’t expected.   The images I was seeing enabled me to imagine her and my aunts Maxine and Annette and my grandmother living in those houses; sitting on those stoops.  As I watched, I suddenly had a clear view of where I came from---I couldn’t wait to see each scene because all the places the characters appeared and the things they talked about was MY family history where I had been born and lived until I was 5…..and then when the story arc yanked me back to reality,  I realized how close we COULD have come in that story to being a country that …. that…..looks a whole lot like WHAT IS HAPPENING ALL AROUND US EVERY DAY RIGHT NOW!!

Wow! 

Life was so much simpler in a way.  Information was harder to come by—no TV or internet-- and so attention was paid to the smaller parts of life that were filled with just as much drama as our lives today.   However, the choice for the Levin family of Simon’s adaptation between complicity and revolt to what was happening in the country is the same as the choice we are all making today.  The evil of fascism is something that all of us must deal with when the specter of it appears in our living room.  No matter the time period, the choice is the same.  And this is our time. 

The difference for me and all Jews in America is that the target ‘other’ in Roth’s book and David Simon’s TV adaptation is me and my family.  Today it is brown and black people.  But it certainly does give me a perspective I did not have—the empathy I am feeling for those Americans who are now the target of Trump’s ‘America First’ philosophy.  It is an ominous nagging fear that won’t go away, a fear that events will get out of hand; a fear that pain and madness is coming.

Then, if you layer on top of that the chaos of the corona virus, you have a ‘sundae’ that goes down hard.  An unseen enemy that can strike without warning and make death surprisingly close, but not before great fear and sickness promise misery.  What a combination!

So, I am hunkered down with my wife.  We feel like we are safe for the moment in our house, trying to figure out how to live on less, while our world spins out of control with no schedule for relief.  What is the antidote to all this?  Well for me, Cecily, my children (who are for the moment safe), and millions of other Americans, there is the hope that tomorrow will bring intelligence and compassion to the world.  I will do my part to socially distance myself, which now seems like the only method of mitigation to reduce the danger.---Will you?  We all must accept responsibility for each other, or our selfishness will be the final chapter in what is clearly the consuming tragedy of our time.