Holiday events December 2023

A list of some of our favorite things in our region this December:

Christmas Tree Sales that Benefit Area Programs: Community Roots, a nonrofit garden center in Dayton, carries a large selection of fresh cut and live fir trees. And Community Roots’ gift shop is stocked with unique items such as local crafts and honey to fill your gift-giving needs. Proceeds benefit community programs such as food pantries. Location: 209 Dayton Valley Road. Hours: Monday through Saturday 10 am – 7pm and Sundays from 11 am - 6 pm. Phone:  350-9250.

Jolabokaflod: Get ready for the Jolabokaflod (“Christmas book flood”), a tradition of exchanging books as gifts on Christmas Eve and spending the night reading and drinking hot chocolate. There are free books for all ages on bookshelves inside the local post office and in the Little Free Library box outside the post office Silver City. 

Friday, December 1: Carson City's 35th Silver and Snowflakes Festival of Lights. Tree lighting on the capitol grounds includes carols by children’s choirs and the appearance of Santa and the Grinch (and photo ops) and free carriage rides. The children begin the program with singing at 5:30 pm. The Tree Lighting Ceremony, with remarks by the Governor and the Mayor, is from 5:30pm-6:15pm. Other groups will be caroling at McFadden Plaza Stage (across from Legislative grounds). 

Saturday December 2: Silver City's annual Holiday Fair is 10am-5pm at the Silver City Schoolhouse. Live music, beverages, local, handmade treasures. 

Saturday December 2 and 3: St. Mary’s Art Center Holiday Faire from 10am-4pm, Virginia City. The Faire continues on Sunday, Dec. 3 from 10am-3pm. 

Saturday December 2 and 3: Senior Center Craft Fair from 10am-5pm, Virginia City.  The Craft Fair continues on Sunday, Dec. 3 from 10am-3pm. 

Sunday, December 10 Holiday Treat Concert: The Carson City Symphony will be joined by the Carson Chamber Singers and the Victorian Dancers. Showtime is at 4 p.m. at the Carson City Community Center, 851 E. William Street. Blood donors at Vitalant's Carson City Donor Center from Dec. 2 through Dec. 9 may receive a complimentary ticket to the concert. For tickets and more information, see CCSymphony.com or call 883-4154.

Saturday, December 16 Silver City Christmas Party: Hosted by the Silver City Volunteer Fire Department, which will provide ham, turkey and beverages. Bring your favorite side dish or dessert. There will be a special appearance by Santa Claus, who will bring gifts for children on his list (add your child’s name to the sign up sheet at the post office). Event will be at the Schoolhouse. 

Through December 21 at Western Nevada College’s Bristlecone Gallery: CCAI's exhibition, "It Started with Willows" can be seen during gallery hours Mon-Fri 8am-7pm. The Carson City show presents contemporary paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures from the Great Basin Native Artists collective and historic working Native baskets from the Lloyd Chichester Collection.

Arts News and Notes Fall 2023 Silver City Nevada

Call for Artists for the Holiday Fair in Silver City: Show and sell your art and crafts at the Silver City Schoolhouse during the annual holiday event, December 2, 2023. Email evangeline@evangelinepresents.com for details. 

New Edition of Neon Nevada by Former Silver City Folks: On November 9, 2023 from 6pm-8pm at the Nevada Museum of Art, Sheila Swan and Peter Laufer, authors of Neon Nevada, will discuss the influence of neon signage on Nevada’s unique culture. Stay for a book signing of their expanded 2023 edition after the talk. Peter Laufer and Sheila Swan began documenting the state's neon decades ago when they were living in Silver City. About Neon Nevada: First published in 1994, Sheila Swan and Peter Laufer take readers on a journey across the state on a quest to discover Nevada’s neon. Full-color photographs and historical commentary bring the state’s hues of neon to life through the year 2022 in the newly updated and expanded edition. The updated edition of the book was released on Oct. 24, 2023. 

Rick Shea and Tony Gilkyson play the Silver City Schoolhouse on Sunday, Nov. 19 at 7PM! Rick Shea and Tony Gilkyson, seasoned guitarists and songwriters with well known resumes (Shea with Wanda Jackson, R.E.M and others, Gilkyson with Tom Waits and Bob Dylan) team up. $15-$25 donation at the door. RSVP: evangeline@evangelinepresents.com This is a benefit for the Silver City Preservation Society. "Gilkyson is a fine guitarist and an equally fine songwriter with an eye for the ironic and darkly humorous." - Los Angeles Times "Shea is.. a hauntingly nostalgic vocalist, imperative guitarist and literate, detail rich songwriter, do yourself a favor" - Sing Out Magazine. The event is at the Silver City Schoolhouse (community center) at 385 High Street, Silver City, NV 89428.

SMAC Fall Exhibition: St. Mary’s Art Center’s fall exhibition includes art by Scott MacLeod, a former artist-in-residence in Silver City, plus art by Honey Coughlin, Shaun Griffin, Edw Martinez, Fredric Hobbs, and many others. The exhibition is on view until Nov. 26, 2023. See SMAC’s website for hours. 

Annual Holiday Fair December 2: Join Silver City for its festive holiday celebration and shopping event on Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023 from 10am-5pm. Handmade fine art, pottery, beadwork, metal work, jewelry, photography, textiles and more from local artists! Enjoy mimosas, hot cocoa, music and a festive atmosphere while you peruse the wonderful offerings. There will also be an art raffle and a bake sale with delicious baked goods from Comstock bakers. Proceeds benefit the Silver City Preservation Society, a 501c3 nonprofit. The event is at the Silver City Schoolhouse (community center) at 385 High Street, Silver City, NV 89428.

Silver City Displays: At the U.S. Post Office in Silver City you'll find a changing display inside of the large glass cabinet on the south wall. Past exhibits have featured the local community garden and gardeners, musicians of Silver City, publications by Silver City locals, artifacts saved from the fire that destroyed the original Schoolhouse in 2004, and many more. 

Silver City Reads: Borrow books at the Silver City Volunteer Library (located inside the Silver City Schoolhouse), which is now open on Saturdays from 2:30pm-5pm. You can also take and keep (or exchange) books that you find at the Silver City Little Free Library (located outside the post office) and the bookshelves inside the post office. 

Alice Cazenave of London, UK, who was an artist-in-residence in Silver City Oct-Dec. 2022, writes, "As part of my PhD fieldwork, I've been tracing the mobilisation of silver used in analogue photographic industries. This time last year I spent two months living in [Silver City, Nevada.] Across only two decades around the 1870s, these sites extracted nearly 7 million tonnes of silver. The toxic legacy of that extraction is extreme and the site is now a U.S National Priorities Superfund site...Whole mountain sides were honeycombed by corporations searching for silver...My time there was spent making photo-chemistry out of the plants that help restabilise the ground. I also spent time with some of the communities living there today, as well as mining corporations that were active in the region. Every evening I went up to Tommy's to look at the view of the Sierra Nevada. He built his house on a pile of mining tailings. He drank beer and I drank tea and those moments were simple and special. I'm so grateful for those I've met along my journeys following silver." Earlier this year Alice presented some of her research at the Photographic Histories Research Centre, De Montfort University during a conference titled "Photography in Its Environment." She has exhibited some of the work she created during her artist residency in Silver City at exhibitions, including one in Silver City, Nevada ("Desert Treasure") as well as in Birmingham, England ("Beyond Silver").  Alice's website is https://www.alice.cazenave.co.uk/

SILVER PALOOZA: The annual Silver Palooza Music and Art Festival in Silver City is scheduled for July 2024 at the Silver City Park, Schoolhouse and stage.

Resident Artist Program in Silver City Welcomes Kerry Rossow

Silver City, Nevada - The Resident Artist Program in Silver City is delighted to announce our summer visiting artist, Kerry Rossow, an Illinois-based author, performer, and co-founder of the She Said Project.

Rossow will create photo essays of Silver City’s historic Comstock community and high desert landscape during her residency. Her writing has been published in three anthologies - two have made the New York Times best-sellers list.

Her photographs and nonfiction gained national attention before she co-founded the She Said Project. The Project includes “That’s What She Said” shows, which serve as a platform for everyday women to share their extraordinary stories on stage. The She Said Project also includes a podcast, co-hosted by Rossow and Project Director, Jenette Jurczyk, as well as That’s What Teens Say, an empowerment program with teen girls. Listen to Rossow's inspirational story about how the She Said Project got started in this podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-she-said-project-my-sister-in-stories/id1416361738?i=1000465579093

Rossow has also taken her own life stories to the stage as part of the cast in the national series of live readings called "Listen to Your Mother", as well as in sold out performances of "That's What She Said" at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and at the Virginia Theater in Champaign, Illinois.

About the Resident Artist Program: People creating in the performing, visual, or literary arts apply to reside at McCormick House in Silver City for periods of up to 3 months in exchange for offering performances, exhibitions, workshops, artwork, etc. to benefit Silver City and the Northern Nevada region. One of the goals of the program is to introduce new voices to the community and programs that engage people in becoming lifelong arts and culture participants or creators. Previous visiting artists include Pulitzer Prize nominated poet David Lee, internationally known photographer Frances Melhop, award winning poet Gary Short of Guatemala, and many artists such as Sophie Scott of New Zealand and Stewart Easton of London. For more information, contact Program director Quest Lakes at (775) 847-0742.

My last opinion column for MVN and RGJ

If you cannot be brave, be kind

by Quest Lakes, May 29, 2020

When I was about ten years old, my dad gave me his copy of The Diary of Anne Frank and recommended that I read it. For decades after reading it, I wondered about the people who stayed quiet and were complicit in their silence as fascism took over.

Naomi Shulman wrote that “nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than ‘politics.’ They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”

My purpose in writing these weekly columns over the last few years has been, in part, a response to a question I posed to myself as a child. If something like that happened here, what would I choose to do?

My answer to myself? Exercise the freedom outlined in this nation’s First Amendment and write columns that remind people of the steps Hitler and Stalin took to consolidate power. Authoritarians often use similar strategies, a “playbook” if you will.

One of Hitler’s most quoted passages from Mein Kampf stated that “what we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood...” In a nod to those words, in 2017 white nationalists descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia where cell phone video captured them carrying torches and chanting things like “Jews will not replace us.” Several of my columns pointed out the rise and growing coordination of white nationalists groups calling for a white ethnostate, and detailed the violence that goal would entail in our pluralistic society.

Other of my columns noted that President Trump has labeled our free press “fake news” and journalists as “liars,” a tactic familiar in Germany when Hitler declared the free press Lügenpresse (lying press). I’ve written about Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and their push to create an entanglement of religion and government.

When I wrote about Gleichschaltung, the Nazi word for establishing a synchronized system of totalitarian control over all aspects of society, or the “Nazification of state and society,” I got in hot water with local Trump supporters. The goals of Gleichschaltung included paying homage to der Fuhrer (the Leader), removing all foreigners (which meant most everyone except those of the “Aryan” race), intimidating or murdering anyone who opposed Nazi ideas (such as communists and members of trade unions), and brainwashing the populace to believe that sacrifice for der Fuhrer and the state was both welcome and desirable. Under Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” gained complete control of communications - newspapers, radio, television, movies, books, as well as music, theater, and art. In this way, Germany became saturated with Nazi ideology and full coordination – or Gleichschaltung - was achieved. In addition, purging the civil service was central to Gleichschaltung.

My column on the Reichstag Fire Decree – similar to declaration of National Emergency – explained how the Decree was ultimately used to establish a one-party Nazi state in Germany, and hinted about the ways authoritarians use chaos to consolidate power. This week, in the midst of a pandemic, President Trump retweeted a video of a speech by Couy Griffin, head of Cowboys for Trump, that begins with Griffin declaring, “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”

One of my columns defined terms like stochastic terrorism, which is the “use of mass public communication to demonize a particular individual or group, which incites or inspires acts of terrorism.”

The Sturmabteilung (SA) or Brownshirts, were the focus of one of my columns. The Brownshirts became the main paramilitary wing of the Nazi party and were essential to the rise of Nazi power. Hitler encouraged the Brownshirts to go after Germany’s leftist and Jewish populations for intimidation. They were also the bullies in brown uniforms posing as “security” at Nazi rallies and meetings. Far from being a small fringe group, the Brownshirts included millions of working class and middle class professionals and ex-military. As such, they successfully popularized the Nazi worldview of political violence, and the patriotic duty to fight “Judeo-Bolshevism.”

In one of my latest columns, I wrote about the infiltration of accelerationist and white supremacist paramilitary groups into the “ReOpen” protests across the country, including in Carson City and Las Vegas. Yale history professor Timothy Snyder has warned, “when the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come."

Referring to unrest in Minnesota, last night President Trump moved this country into a new stage when he tweeted, “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” His use of the phrase, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” was a purposeful reference to bigoted Miami, Florida police Chief Walter Headley, known in the 1960s for his mistreatment of the black community and his use of that exact phrase. Segregationist George Wallace also used the phrase during his 1968 presidential campaign.

This is my last column for the Mason Valley News. The country has moved to a new stage that requires more than columns. In November of 2016, Sarah Kendzior, an expert on authoritarian regimes, wrote something that is important to remember in the coming months: “My heart breaks for the United States of America. It breaks for those who think they are my enemies as much as it does for my friends. You still have your freedom, so use it. There are many groups organizing for both resistance and subsistence, but we are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave – and it is often hard to be brave – be kind.”

The Perfect Town for A Wedding

*Column by Quest Lakes first published in the Mason Valley News and Reno Gazette Journal in Oct. 2019.

Silver City, Nevada- Silver City has always attracted creative folks - sometimes only for one day. Back in 1939, world famous photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White and novelist Erskine Caldwell stopped in Silver City and were married in a church here (it later became the home of legendary newsman Travus T. Hipp).

The couple found a minister in Carson City, and took him with them in search of a place to be married “before sundown.” In her auto-biography Portrait of Myself, Bourke-White wrote that, “we rounded a curve and there was Silver City, hanging on a bluff above us, looking so charming that both of us knew that this was the perfect town.”

They found a church in town, but it was locked. Bourke-White recalls that their taxi driver searched the town for someone to open the church. He found a “nice, clean woman” named Bertha Peddlar running a local shop. She unlocked the doors for them and stayed to serve as one of the witnesses to the marriage. Bourke-White was “enchanted” with the church and the "glorious panorama of bluffs and mesas and desert patches stretching as far as the eye could reach."

Her husband, Erskine Caldwell, was at that time already well-known for his writing about poverty and racism in the U.S. in his novels such as Tobacco Road. By the end of his life he’d written 25 novels and 150 short stories.

Margaret Bourke-White was the first accredited woman war correspondent, taking combat zone pictures during World War II and some of the first horrifying photographs documenting Nazi concentration camps after the war.

She became on international “symbol of swashbuckling photography during her unique career.” In their book World War II, authors Carl J. Schneider and ‎Dorothy Schneider wrote that she was “torpedoed in the Mediterranean, strafed by the Luftwaffe, stranded on an Arctic island, bombarded in Moscow, and pulled out of the Chesapeake when her chopper crashed.” She interviewed and photographed Mohandas K. Gandhi a few hours before his assassination in India.

If you search “Margaret Bourke-White photographs”, you’ll recognize many of the famous images that earned her the reputation as one of the most important photographers of the 20th Century.

My son and his fiancee also think Silver City is the perfect town for a wedding. They’re getting married here next summer.

What We Can Learn from Philadelphia 1918

*First published as an opinion column by Quest Lakes in the RGJ and MVN Feb. 28, 2020.

As concerns grow about the new coronavirus, COVID-19, the public needs to trust that they’re getting accurate information about it in order to follow recommendations for slowing the spread. In his 2017 Smithsonian essay about the 1918 flu pandemic, historian John Barry wrote that when the world faces the next pandemic, “the effectiveness of interventions will depend on public compliance, and the public will have to trust what it is being told...The most important lesson from 1918 is to tell the truth. Though that idea is incorporated into every preparedness plan I know of, its actual implementation will depend on the character and leadership of the people in charge when a crisis erupts.”

The spread of COVID-19 motivated me to learn more about the 1918 flu pandemic that resulted in the deaths of millions of people around the world, possibly as many as 100 million. I read Barry’s article “How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America” and Allison Meier’s 2019 article “The 1918 Parade That Spread Death” to learn more. Both put the impact of that pandemic in perspective by describing how 12,000 people died in Philadelphia in a period of just six weeks in 1918.

How did it spread so quickly in Philadelphia in particular? Here’s the simplified timeline: a few sailors with the virus arrived at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in September of 1918. Within days 600 sailors had it. About ten days later, a patriotic rally and parade to raise money for the war brought 200,000 Philadelphians to mingle in the streets. Within a few days after that gathering, every hospital bed in the city was occupied with people suffering from the flu. Reverend Thomas Brennan recorded what he saw at Holy Cross Cemetery during the pandemic, writing, “Who can describe the scenes that met the eye during these harrowing days? Animus meminisse horret luctuque refugit” (meaning, “my soul shudders at the recollection”).

But why, knowing that the deadly disease was spreading so quickly, did the city allow the rally to go on? In the days just before the parade, why did the head of Philadelphia’s Naval Hospital tell newspapers that, “there is no cause for further alarm. We believe we have it well in hand.”

Barry explains that part of the answer to this puzzle is that Congress passed the Sedition Act in May of 1918, making it a crime with a possible sentence of up to 20 years to “utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States...or to urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production in this country of any thing or things...necessary or essential to the prosecution of the war.” Government propaganda instructed Americans to report to the Justice Department anyone “who spreads pessimistic stories...cries for peace, or belittles our effort to win the war.”

In this wartime atmosphere, some public health officials tried to keep morale high at the cost of truth. Shortly before the parade, newspapers reported that Philadelphia’s public health director, Wilmer Krusen, said he had “no concern whatever” about his ability to “nip the epidemic in the bud.” He ignored doctors pleas to call off the rally. Doctors tried sending letters to newspapers, but editors wouldn’t print their letters, or stories based on the doctors’ warnings.

Writing about the problem of misinformation from U.S. government and health officials during the 1918 flu pandemic, Barry noted that the public became suspicious of all information: “without leadership, without the truth, trust evaporated.”

Learning about mistakes made in Philadelophia in 1918 makes me ponder the situation we find ourselves in now, with the new coronavirus.

Earlier this week, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said of the virus that “it’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness...We expect to see more cases of person-to-person spread among close contacts. ... The goal here is to slow entry of this virus into the United States.”

President Trump reacted to these facts with tweets suggesting there’s a widespread conspiracy among the media and Democrats to weaponize the outbreak to hurt him politically. He tweeted, “low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible. Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape!”

Then during a press conference Wednesday about the virus, President Trump claimed, “We're rapidly developing a vaccine...In speaking to the doctors we think this is something that we can develop fairly rapidly." In fact, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that a vaccine won’t be ready for 12 to 18 months, and that’s only if trials taking place now succeed.

During that same press conference, Trump announced that he is charging Vice President Mike Pence with leading the national COVID-19 response, asserting that Pence “has a certain talent for this." However, as a former Governor of Indiana, Pence oversaw a rural HIV outbreak that spread to epidemic proportions when he slow walked approval for needle exchanges. It became a case study in what not to do during a public health emergency. During the press conference, Trump noted that he was also requesting $2.5 billion to respond to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The scramble to assign unqualified people to carry out the U.S. response to the virus and to fund that response is happening because the Trump administration has hollowed out the government agencies needed for pandemic prevention and response. For instance, the executive branch team charged with coordinating a response to a pandemic was eliminated by the Trump administration in 2018. With regard to funding, there have been significant funding cuts to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) under Trump. In 2018, the CDC’s funding for global disease outbreak prevention was cut by 80 percent. The result was that the CDC canceled its work in 39 of 49 countries – including in China- to prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics.

In a step sure to further erode public trust, the day after Trump’s press conference the New York Times reported that Mike Pence will be vetting all statements about the COVID-19 situation coming from government health officials and scientists. Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s leading experts on infectious diseases who has advised half a dozen presidents on public health crises, was scheduled to go on five talk shows this coming Sunday. According to news reports today, Friday February 28, Dr. Fauci canceled all five appearances.

"“But if such desire drives you to know our disasters,
although my soul shudders to remember and once more shrinks from grief,
I shall begin.”

A Direct Current Through the Body Politic

Gleichschaltung was the Nazi word for strategically establishing a synchronized system of totalitarian control over all aspects of society – the press, clubs, schools. In simple terms, Gleichschaltung was the “Nazification of state and society.” It was a coordinated campaign that pushed the whole society into line with Nazi ideology and policy. Everything became political – sports, the arts, libraries, entertainment, family. There was no ideology-free zone. Even during a religious event, perhaps something like this morning’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., politics would be front and center.

The goals of Gleichschaltung included paying homage to der Fuhrer (the Leader), removing all foreigners (which meant most everyone except those of the “Aryan” race), intimidating or murdering anyone who opposed Nazi ideas (such as communists and members of trade unions), and brainwashing the populace to believe that sacrifice for der Fuhrer and the state was both welcome and desirable. With regard to embracing sacrifice, in the U.S. today that might look like encouraging farmers, who have borne the brunt of President Trump’s trade war with China, to believe that his trade war will entail only short term sacrifice, with big benefits for farms and the Homeland in the long term.

Under Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” gained almost complete control of communications - newspapers, radio, television, movies, magazines, books, public ceremonies, as well as music, theater, and art. In this way, Germany became saturated with Nazi ideology and full coordination – or Gleichschaltung - was achieved. Today in the U.S. if one wanted to achieve something similar, strategies could include demonizing and repressing the free press, and calling for the elimination of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which includes National Public Radio and PBS), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. But that could never happen here, right?

In their mission to create Gleichschaltung, the Nazi Party co-opted or destroyed any organization or club – from sports clubs to community choirs to agricultural associations - that might have influence. If such a strategy was enlisted in the U.S., for example, one might replace the heads of the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, and the Environmental Protection Agency with people hostile to the missions of their own departments. Or the president could insert himself into the National Football League by repeatedly tweeting threats such as, “Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!"

On a local level, mayors and town council members did the bidding of the Nazi Party, with the threat of reprisals from Nazi stormtroopers if they did not oust Jews and opponents of the Nazis from jobs in public institutions. In addition, purging the civil service was central to Gleichschaltung. In an example from our own time, someone like former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Maria Yovanovitch would most certainly have been pushed out.

People who read my column sometimes email me to ask, in essence, “what should be done then?” One of my answers is to pay attention to the warnings of history. Yale history professor Timothy Snyder puts it much more eloquently in his book “On Tyranny.” He writes, “European democracies collapsed into right-wing authoritarianism and fascism in the 1920s and ‘30s...The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands...We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex...Americans today are not wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism...Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”

*RGJ posted this opinion column on Feb. 6, 2020 but then deleted it soon afterward due to complaints. Fortunately, they put it back up on Feb. 11. The incident reminds me of something London-based author Umair Haque recently wrote. He asks, "What happens to a society that can’t say the unspeakable? The answer is both simple and obvious: the unspeakable does...A set of words that Americans can’t say, because America’s thinking class, leaders, politicians, and so forth, won’t, can’t say them, to begin with. You know the words. The words are ones like “fascism” and “authoritarianism” and “theocracy” and “concentration camps” and “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.”..There are four key political effects of failing to speak the unspeakable. Opposition becomes appeasement. The opposition fractures, because it’s not unified in fighting a thing that doesn’t exist. And because those terrible things have never happened, nobody can be held accountable for them at all. Finally, reality stops mattering in any way whatsoever, because what you see before your eyes doesn’t really exist. What happens culturally when a people won’t speak the unspeakable? The result is the development of one of the most crucial institutions of any social collapse: a silent majority. A silent majority is called that because it’s made of people who should, and mostly do, know better. But they lack the courage, wisdom, insight, and defiance to speak. They are cowed and intimidated. They are fearful and anxious...As a silent majority refuses to speak, as it holds its tongue, so norms begin to disintegrate, from democratic ones of peace, tolerance, equality, and fairness, into fascist-authoritarian ones of violence, intimidation, bullying, ethnic hierarchies, and purification. What was once severely abnormal and unacceptable becomes a grim everyday reality...Remember what we are really fighting for — and always have been. Freedom, truth, democracy, justice, equality. Progress and civilization. Decency and humanity. Then we are capable of unifying around those things..."