Out of fire, faith

We are in a burning season, and the flames are just beginning to rise.

Eight days hence, Donald Trump will start burning essential virtues like tolerance, decency, honesty, respect, truthfulness, duty, responsibility and integrity. He will light them all on fire, and summon the furies forward.

He will tell his faction that they are the nation, and his opponents are its enemies who must be targeted, humiliated and destroyed. He will empower the bullies, and give license to the insane — so long as they meet the simple single requirement to serve, which is loyalty to Trump and submission to his whims.

Donald Trump pretended to be a builder on a reality show, but the truth is that he is an arsonist. What his transition has been about is arranging his lighter fuel, torches and accelerants for the big day.

Since winning the election, Trump has nominated a spectacular menagerie of unfit individuals to lead America’s most vital national security agencies from defense to intelligence. He has nominated drunks, accused rapists, cult members, conspiracy theorists, and all manner of disordered incompetents for life and death positions that require good judgement, integrity and patriotism. He has assailed Canada, Denmark, Panama and Mexico, threatening them economically and militarily.

The madness is just beginning.

Elon Musk is Trump’s unleashed partner and puppet master. The alpha to Trump’s omega. The yin to his yang. Together, they are a twisted version of Franklin and Eleanor, our new first couple, the front seat of the Cybertruck on a four-year double date with Jeff Bezos, Princess Sanchez and Mark Zuckerberg riding in the back.

Elon Musk is busy these days. He has added Germany and Great Britain to his list of projects. When not trying to topple the British government with incitement and lies,
Musk finds time to engage in Hitler revisionism with the German AFD party, which decries the excess of Holocaust memorials in Germany, and insists that the SS gets a raw deal.

They are all arsonists. They wish to burn the imperfect world that emerged from the one that was nearly destroyed fighting a form of slavery and tyranny that has been mostly forgotten about within one lived human lifetime. There are no words.

Yet, the flames will subside. They always do. Fire, eventually runs out of fuel. Always.

When it does, the rebuilding begins. Let me share the story of such a place and the lessons it holds.

Warsaw is a beautiful city. She glistens like a jewel at sunset.

Old Town offers no visible signs — at first glance — of what happened there.

There is no evidence of subjugation and repression, destruction and murder.

There is not a trace of the burning.

What I saw was a 21st century capital, nestled on the banks of the Vistula River.

The perfectly-hued buildings are centuries old, and the cobblestone streets stretch back long before the United States existed.

The city is 1,000 years old. Its enormous squares include buildings that date to the 12th century. It is storybook beautiful. A young person would never know that something happened here that requires remembrance.

Why must we remember? After all, it is easier to forget about difficulty and hardship. It does not take long to forget — even in Poland.

Remembrance honors the dead, and enforces wisdom learned from the sacrifices of war. It is a heavy weight to remember, and on the surface, an impossible weight without the capacity to find resolution and forgiveness to even the most grievous wrongs.

Collective guilt, punishment, retribution and revenge are a philosophy that murders the future. They impose a cancer on the spirit, and weigh down the soul. It strangles the optimism necessary for creation, invention, rejuvenation, renewal, purpose and the pursuit of happiness. The lessons of history must be absorbed because they are the guidebook for our survival.

They also must always be kept separate from the debate over our destiny. Where we are going is into the unknown of the future.

What lies ahead has not yet happened, but it will soon be part of a greater whole that can be connected quite easily to the past. The past rumbles its disapproval with the present sometimes. It must. How else to explain the regathering of vanquished dogmas in new forms with new names? Is it farce, tragedy, destiny?

There are signs outside the beautiful Royal Castle that are a summons to national memory and the achievement of its rebuilding and reconstruction by donations from the Polish people in 1970.

The signs say that the rebuilding has reached a jubilee of 50 years, but they also insinuate that there has been a creeping amnesia about a time when the whole nation came together in a rebuke to repression and an assertion of national pride and sovereignty.

It was a collective action that was a preface to something that was building, coming, but later. Today, the Polish flag flies over the castle in a position of certainty and preeminence. It seems impossible that it had ever been taken down and made illegal in the homeland of a fighting people.

I thought about trying to explain to a child, or sadly, many of my countrymen and women who are enthralled to a man who has been accused by his former chief of staff, a retired USMC general, of praising the man who razed the castle, what happened here, and why it matters.

Why does it matter in the United States? Why does our decision in America matter to people all over the world who are watching, waiting and praying that we do something about the creeping fascism descending over America and freedom everywhere?

People look around, up and down, when they see something new. They tend to not look closely, preferring the impression over the details.

Looking down at the cobblestone streets in Warsaw’s Old Town.

The Royal Castle is on the right.

What I would first explain is that everything within site was destroyed. I would explain that it was annihilated, and reduced to dust and rubble. All of it.

The crimes were committed by Nazi Germany. Then, more crimes were committed by the Russians. Sometimes, the Russians and Nazis committed crimes against the Polish, together.

Other times, they committed crimes against the Polish people separately when fighting each other. Either way, the subjugation was deadly, immoral and inhumane.

Those signs are everywhere.

Modern Poland has not escaped western consumerism. The Hermès store is flanked by the Aston Martin dealership, and a dozen fashion houses have signage hanging within my field of vision. There is McDonald’s and Starbucks, food trucks and balloon vendors.

There are other signs. They are subdued, but when I look, they are everywhere.

The first and third photos below mark the spots where hundreds of men, women and children were herded against a wall and machine gunned by Nazi troops.

The second photo marks a combat action by the Polish home army against Nazi occupation. The Poles resisted, and fought like no other captured nation. They paid a price. The Nazis destroyed everything. They reduced centuries of human achievement into rubble. They murdered almost all of the Jews.

Behind this line below, where the ghetto wall stood, hundreds of thousands of Jews were herded into squalor. They would be shipped to Treblinka and Auschwitz. Few would survive. Centuries were ruined in moments. Unspeakable doesn’t even begin describe it.

Yet, here it is. A city rebuilt. It is a miracle, and appropriately recognized as a great human achievement by holding a UNESCO world heritage site designation. Brick by brick, it was all put back together.

A new city was built on top of the old, but it was not free. The Nazi yoke gave way to a new tyranny that would endure for 45 years.

How was it that tyranny ended in Poland?

If the complicated and multifaceted question demanded a singular answer, what would it be? What quality was found? What was remembered?

Let me show you.

A 59-year-old man returned to his country in June 1979 named Karol Wojtyla.

He was movie star-handsome, charismatic, and deeply feared by the forces of dictatorship and oppression.

Why did they fear this man of peace? What worried them about the man history would remember as Pope John Paul II?

It was this simple declaration:

BE NOT AFRAID.

Let it ring true everywhere this Sunday in America from the front lines of the great Los Angeles Fire to anywhere there is fear and hopelessness.

Let it be heard everywhere people are yearning for freedom from Gaza to Tehran to Damascus to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Let it be heard in every corner of America, and all around the world, where people are united together in shared values of humanity that demand justice, equality, freedom, liberty and a rule of law as a necessity of life.

They were some of the 20th century’s most electrifying words.

There is no doubt around their deep moral connection to the words of FDR, a man who was described by the world’s leaders in the aftermath of the great victory over fascism as an apostle of peace, who said:

THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF.

The Poles have a reason to be afraid. They stand on a dangerous frontier. They are menaced by Russian aggression from the east, and American abandonment from the west. They are threatened by a loss of faith in freedom from places where its loss has never been known.

Warsaw’s Old Town is testament to the human spirit and its genius. It will be a guide for the people of Los Angeles about what can be rebuilt and restored, if not reclaimed.

There was a Great War, and the darkness was defeated at a terrible cost that was paid unevenly.

No country paid a higher cost than Poland in World War II, and that was because no other subjugated nation fought back like the Poles. They had an uprising against tyranny and slavery and prevailed.

How do I know?

Last year, I closed my eyes on a beautiful Easter Sunday in Poland.

I sat alone, an American of Polish descent, a Catholic converting to Judaism, breathing in a perfect day. The weather reminded me of Santa Barbara. The city square was bustling and beautiful. Everywhere, there were people walking in the footsteps of memory and history. Children were smiling. Some were buying balloons, and others, candy. The beer was starting to pour in the cafés.

I closed my eyes and shut my ears for a second. I breathed in deeply and emptied my mind.

There were no bells ringing, or trumpets blaring. There was no joy, only fear.

I heard steps. They were heavy and in unison. Those were boots. Jack boots. I saw the swastikas and heard German. Those Nazis saw no people, only vermin and slaves.

I opened my eyes, and it was all gone — like it never was, and never could be. There were no signs anywhere. Unless that is, you know where to look.

Faith and hope are a choice.

When the fires come, it can burn through things, but never faith. Fire has a way of making that stronger.

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