OUT OF THE BLUE

It happened nearly 50 years ago; only a couple months into my 27th year. I was in the process of failing to find a a crew position on a sailboat heading west to Hawaii. I wanted to feel three, possibly 4 weeks of sailing on a beam reach, a friendly currant adding to the knautical miles traveled. What could possibly go wrong? My first postcard invite fell thru, my next postcard will also fail but I don't know it yet. This was before email. Crew positions were applied for through the USPS after answering an ad from a yachting magazines.

I was sitting on a bench in Marina Del Rey, the bronze statue of the Helmsman under a line of date figs off in the distance to my right. Before me in the bay, young people were renting  small sailboats named Sydney Sabots. Flat prow and stern, about 9' long, jibless spritsail and center-board. I was enjoying a burrito from a food cart when an old man approached the bench I was sitting on and sat down at the other end. I nodded to him and we returned to watching those little boats making unplanned jibes and maneuvering to avoid collisions. 

"Those little boats helped people escape German occupation in WWII." 

"Were you one of them", I asked? He nodded. He was then my age now, or more. His hair was grey, his nose was prominent, his glasses a cliche' of an old Jewish man. Larry David without the antics. 

"We left Warsaw before the Germans invaded. My parents went one way, my sister another, and I went to Holland as a guest of the Dutch Resistance. Yes I was scared. The Germans were people that enjoyed watching people suffer. We resisted the way people have resisted occupiers from the beginning of time. We spit in their food, added a dollop of laxatives to their soup some psycho-active mushroom to there food, Interfered with their movement by plugging their tailpipes with potatoes, putting sugar in the gas tank, spiking their tires. There was even an aerosol spray that could be spritzed on an officers wool slacks to smell like rotten eggs. We did our act of resistance, then scurried away in the darkness. You Americans, I am now one, learned that lesson in Vietnam. I lived in a hidden room in the attic, behind a false wall. Everyday I waited for the Gestapo to arrest the family harboring me. Were they eating more than would be expected of a family their size. Did someone turn us in for a reward? The head of the family sailed those little boats in weekend regattas. At night, a frightened refugee would be hidden under a tarp in the boat. The bigger boats were searched by German soldiers, wearing their hard-sole boots, often they helped themselves to a bottle of wine and bread or cheese. The lesser boats were not bothered. The little boats would sail out beyond the committee boat where a fishing boat was hiding over the horizon. There the passenger was offloaded onto a fishing boat to complete their journey to freedom."

When I first heard the old man's story I was suitably amazed. It was not your everyday story from Mother Jones. What I did not consider, from this story was the fear that old man, then still not an adult, must have felt. The little spot of heightened awareness that comes with living in a paranoid environment. Being a white American, I had never had to live with that...until Trump's 2nd, non-consecutive term. I now live with that every day. I know that I will not experience the cruelness of fascism, because I am not the color they are looking for. But I  am the droid they're looking for (sorry Obi-Won). But always in the back of my mind, I know that I am still vulnerable, because I volunteer for the dreaded communists, and I actively resist, in life and on-line. I know all of these things and resist because there are others, like that old man as a boy, who know the daily dread and must keep a lower profile. It is not Gestapo they fear. It is ICE. Like the Gestapo of that far-off time, they have no external controls and have been chosen for their lack of internal controls. We will not get through this soon, or without more casualties. This fascism (it is, all 14 of Umberto Eco's points of fascism) is deep and has been comfortably in place for more than 50 years; getting measurably worse for most of that time, though beneath the awareness of some of us. All controls were destroyed by Donald Trump and DOGE. Trump, or his successors will not give up without a fight. They cannot lose because they will be tried, and tried for a yet unknown number of crimes after that. The result of "flooding the zone". Trump is like Putin, and Netanyahu. He figured he had a sure thing. They are in the process of finding out it is not a sure thing. They are finding that if they sue for peace, they will die, or be tried. Figuratively or metaphorically, it does not matter. A million dollars is chump change for these people. One guy bought a banana object de arte for multiple millions of dollars, then ate it. Because that trifling amount of money means nothing to them. The 21st Century version of lighting a fat cigar with hundred dollar bills. When Putin is gone, there may be a chance for Russia to be what it never was. When Netanyahu is gone, Israel will still retain a Knessett that allowed the conservatives to maintain control. When Trump is gone we still have a party that bought the dictator gig. We still have to struggle to get back to become what we never were, but strived to be. We will not live to see it, but we must, must, must continue to resist!