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One of our neighbors is moving. I've been in this neighborhood for
about six years now, but didn't really know them very well at all -
just waves and nods, mostly.
So I heard the moving van pull up this morning. When I got home this
evening I happened to spy my neighbor (he's like 85 years old - I
don't know exactly, but he's old, talks and moves very slowly)
standing on the sidewalk next to the van. I walked over and shook
his hand, and we started talking. I asked him where he was moving,
and he said, "Back to Germany."
I had been stationed in Germany for two years while in the military,
so I lit up, and commented about how beautiful the country was, and
inquired if he was going back because he missed it.
"No," he answered me. "I'm going back because I've seen this
before." He then commenced to explain that when he was a kid, he
watched with his family in fear as Hitler's government committed
atrocity after atrocity, and no one was willing to say anything. He
said the news refused to question the government, and the ones who
did were not in the newspaper business much longer. He said good
neighbors, people he had known all his life, turned against his
family and other Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority "as
if they were starved for it" (his words).
He said he was too old to see it happen right in front of his eyes
again, and too old to do anything about it, so he was taking his
family back to Europe on Thursday where they would be safe from
George W. Bush and his neocons. He seemed resolute, but troubled,
nonetheless, as if being too young on one end and too old on the
other to fight what he saw happening was wearing on him.
I gotta tell you - it was chilling. I let him talk, and the whole
time, my gut was churning, like I had mutated butterflies in my
stomach. When he was finished, he shook my hand, gripping it really
hard, until his knuckles turned white and he was shaking. He looked
me in the eyes, hard, and said, "I will pray for your family and
your country." He let go of my hand and hobbled away.
I have related this event to you in the hopes it will serve as a
cautionary anecdote about the state of our Union, and to illustrate
the path we Americans are being led down by a group of fanatics bent
on global economic and military dominion. When a man who survived
the fruits of fascism decides its time to leave THIS country because
he's seeing the same patterns that led to the Holocaust and other
Nazi horrors beginning to form here, it is time for us to recognize
the underlying evil inherent in the actions of those who claim they
work for all Americans, and for all mankind. And it is incumbent
upon all Americans, Red and Blue, Republican and Democrat, to stop
them. |
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milk