Category: Jerry’s Blog and Articles

America has always taken.
What we are seeing now only feels shocking because, for a relatively short period of time, it didn’t look this way.

The openness of the cruelty feels new.
The confrontations in the streets feel new.
The lack of embarrassment feels new.

But they aren’t new.

They feel extreme because many of us grew up during an unusual period in American history—a period when restraint existed, when empathy expanded, and when it felt like progress was real and permanent. That period shaped our expectations. It did not define America.

America has always been an experiment—not just in democracy, but in how much can be taken from people while still claiming moral ideals. That experiment has never moved in a straight line. It moves in cycles.

Cruelty doesn’t disappear here.
It pauses.
It reshapes itself.
Then it comes back.

From the very beginning, America has been about taking. Land was taken. Labor was taken. Resources were taken. Power was taken. And just as important as any of that, the story was taken—the narrative of who America is and what it stands for.

This isn’t a moral judgment. It’s a pattern.

Indigenous land wasn’t negotiated for—it was seized. Enslaved labor wasn’t a side effect—it was central to prosperity. Immigrant labor was welcomed only when it was cheap, controllable, and disposable.

American prosperity did not come from restraint.
It came from extraction.

What changed over time was not the behavior.
What changed was the explanation.

America moves in cycles. First it takes aggressively to grow. Then it justifies that taking with ideals—freedom, opportunity, destiny. When pressure builds and instability threatens, the system pulls back just enough to survive. Empathy expands briefly, not because it is valued, but because it is necessary.

And when expectations grow too large, the system tightens again.

Harder.
Colder.
More openly.

Cruelty doesn’t vanish.
It waits.

From early on, America learned how to separate ideals from behavior. Liberty was declared while slavery expanded. Equality was promised while exclusion was enforced. Opportunity was advertised while access was controlled.

The ideals became something to believe in.
Reality became something to live with.

That separation allowed people to function inside contradiction. The story softened what was being taken. The poetry made the harm easier to tolerate.

It worked.

One of the strongest myths America ever created was that immigrants were welcomed. They weren’t. Irish immigrants were despised. Italians were criminalized. Jews were blocked by quotas. Chinese immigrants were legally excluded. Mexican laborers were brought in when needed and pushed out when convenient.

What changed wasn’t the treatment.
It was the story.

Emma Lazarus’s poem on the Statue of Liberty didn’t describe America as it was. It described America as it wanted to see itself. People embraced that image because it allowed them to believe they were part of something moral.

The poem stood.
The inspections continued.
The detentions continued.
The exclusions continued.

America learned that it could behave one way and describe itself another—and most people would accept it, because they needed to.

Cruelty in America has rarely been loud or chaotic. Most of the time it has been administrative. Lawful. Routine. Bureaucratic. Whether enforced by slave patrols, removal orders, exclusion laws, labor crackdowns, or modern agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the function has stayed the same.

Decide who belongs.
Take what is needed.
Discard the rest.

That kind of cruelty doesn’t require hate.
It requires efficiency.

Politicians didn’t create this system. They learned how to survive inside it. Early leaders were open about hierarchy because the economy depended on it. Over time, politicians learned something more useful: how to manage discomfort.

They learned how to talk about compassion while enforcing hardness. How to praise ideals while protecting systems built on extraction. How to express concern without accepting responsibility.

The outcomes stayed the same.
The language changed.

Administering cruelty without appearing cruel became part of the job.

Every expansion of rights in America followed the same pattern. Civil rights. Women’s rights. Disability rights. LGBTQ rights. None came easily. All were resisted. And all were treated as dangerous once they began to work.

These movements didn’t just challenge discrimination. They changed who could reasonably expect dignity. And that mattered.

For a time, empathy expanded. Laws changed. Access widened. Visibility increased. But empathy creates expectations. And expectations threaten systems built on taking.

So the system tolerated progress—until it didn’t.

After World War II, something unusual happened. For a short period, American ideals and American behavior came closer together than ever before. Education expanded. Homeownership expanded. Labor protections strengthened. Public investment benefited the many.

This wasn’t pure moral awakening. It was practical. The world had just seen what industrialized cruelty led to. Shared sacrifice created shared obligation. Stability required dignity.

For a while, empathy wasn’t optional.
It made sense.

That period became the America many people still think of as normal.

It wasn’t.

As dignity expanded, expectations expanded. As civil rights advanced, as women demanded autonomy, as marginalized groups insisted on inclusion, empathy began to feel like a threat again. Slowly, the language shifted. Public good became waste. Solidarity became dependency. Restraint became weakness.

Cruelty didn’t creep back.
It returned with confidence.

The election of a Black president, Barack Obama, was celebrated as a milestone—and it was. But structurally, it crossed a line the system was never designed to hold.

For many people, this wasn’t symbolic. It felt like loss—loss of ownership, loss of certainty, loss of who America was for.

What followed wasn’t accidental. First came obstruction and delegitimization. Then normalization of disrespect. Then a broader correction.

The message the system absorbed was simple: this cannot happen again. Not just him—the idea that power could permanently shift.

So the structure adjusted.

What came next wasn’t chaos.
It was restoration.

Empathy was reframed as excess.
Inclusion as threat.
Rights as overreach.

The old “normal”—hierarchy, hardness, control—had to be brought back.

This wasn’t just about policy.
It was about boundaries.

Who belongs.
Who decides.
Who counts.

That is why today feels so extreme. Not because it is new, but because it violates expectations shaped by a rare period of restraint. If we compare today to America before World War II—open exclusion, unapologetic force, mass displacement—the shock fades.

What feels like collapse is, in many ways, a return.

What is new is the openness. The confrontation. The lack of shame. Force is no longer hidden behind paperwork. It is visible. Televised. Normalized. Cruelty has become a signal of seriousness. Empathy is treated as disorder.

That doesn’t require ideology.
It requires incentives.

American prosperity has always depended on taking—including taking control of meaning. Who is deserving. Who belongs. Who is blamed. Who benefits. The ideals were never lies. But they were never fully paid for either.

The myth persists because it makes participation possible. Believing in the ideals softens what is taken. It doesn’t stop it.

America has never failed because it lacked ideals. It struggles because it keeps testing how long ideals can survive without being practiced. The danger isn’t that cruelty exists. The danger is when cruelty is treated as proof that the system is working.

Because once that happens, empathy stops being a value.
It becomes a liability.

That line has been crossed before.
History keeps asking the same question:

Do we recognize the pattern—
or do we take again?

I keep being told that people won’t read my blog because it’s too long.

At best, they say, they’ll glance at the title.
Why not turn it into a meme?
Why not reduce it to a paragraph?
Why not condense it to something that can be absorbed in 30 seconds?

They usually say it casually.
Reasonably.
Almost apologetically.

And then, without realizing it, the responsibility shifts.

If only the author had shortened it.
If only it were easier.
If only it didn’t ask so much.

People used to read newspapers.

Not skim headlines — read. Long articles that ran in depth, sometimes across multiple pages. You had to jump pages to finish a single piece. It took time. It required attention. And people expected that, because understanding the world was considered worth the effort.

That norm is gone.

Today, people ask — sincerely — why the history of the world can’t be reduced to two short paragraphs that can be skimmed, not read.

What’s been lost isn’t intelligence.

It’s attention.

And with it, the desire to understand anything complex.

Here is the part that matters to me personally.

My intent is not to entertain.

I’m not writing to compete for attention, provoke quick reactions, or give people something to feel angry about and move on from. I’m not trying to market ideas or package them for easy consumption.

My focus is understanding.

That means taking ideas far enough that patterns become visible — how behaviors repeat, how assumptions harden, how consequences follow whether we like them or not.

That cannot be done in a meme.
It cannot be done in a paragraph.

And the truth is, it often cannot be done even in a blog post.

That’s why I’m writing a book — Echoes of History.

History, and the patterns that repeat across it, are too complex to understand in fragments.

Long articles can open the door.
They can slow people down.
They can create curiosity.

But they are still fragments.

To truly understand patterns, you have to stay with them — across time, across societies, across circumstances that feel unique but behave the same way. That requires space, continuity, and patience.

It requires a book.

People often say, with absolute certainty, “That can’t happen here.”

They don’t say it defensively.
They say it as if it’s obvious.

So I ask a simple question:

Based on what facts?

The answer is almost always confusion.

“What do you mean?”
“We’re different.”
“Times are different.”

So I ask again:

Different based on what evidence?

And that’s where the conversation usually ends.

Because there are no facts supporting that certainty — only belief.

History tells us something far less comforting, and far more reliable:

Anything can happen anywhere if the behaviors and patterns are the same.

That is not opinion.
That is fact.

Good things happen because of that fact.
Bad things happen because of that fact.

Outcomes change only when behavior changes.

History does not respond to confidence, certainty, or emotion. It responds to patterns.

I’m also struck by another contradiction I see constantly.

People tell me they don’t have time to read anything meaningful — and then spend hours online consuming short comments, memes, clips, and complaints.

Time is not the issue.

Attention is.

Scrolling feels light.
Reading feels demanding.

One passes time.
The other asks something of you.

And when something asks too much, the pattern offers an escape: react instead of engage.

The purpose of reading has quietly shifted.

It is no longer to learn.
It is no longer to understand.

It is to react.

To express an opinion.
To release emotion.
To feel anger, certainty, or validation — quickly.

If something doesn’t upset people or confirm what they already believe, many decide it isn’t worth their time.

People now say things like, “Don’t bother me with the facts — I don’t have the time.”

And then we wonder why our country is in the mess it’s in.

This didn’t happen by accident.

A population trained to skim instead of study is easier to distract, easier to divide, and easier to manage. When attention collapses, accountability collapses with it. Norms change quietly. Power consolidates. Responsibility dissolves.

Anger turns sideways — toward each other — instead of upward, toward the forces shaping our lives.

This blog is written the way it is because I refuse to participate in that pattern.

Not out of stubbornness.
Not out of nostalgia.

But because understanding still matters to me.

This blog is meant to slow people down.

The book is meant to take them the rest of the way.

Neither is meant to entertain.

Both are meant to help people see what is actually happening — while there is still time to notice it.

That’s not arrogance.
It’s honesty.

It’s for people who want to understand complex issues, who are willing to invest attention, and who recognize that truth is rarely fast, simple, or comfortable.

If someone only wants a headline or a meme, this won’t work for them.

That’s not a failure.

It’s a boundary.

The goal here isn’t reach.

It’s depth.

Not agreement — but understanding.
Not speed — but clarity.

And that is why the blog exists.

And why the book has to exist too.

Most people don’t say the system is breaking me.

They say they’re tired.
They say they’re behind.
They say they must have missed something everyone else figured out.

They wonder why they’re working harder than their parents did and feeling less secure.
Why nothing ever seems to settle.
Why planning the future feels risky instead of hopeful.

This isn’t laziness.
And it isn’t nostalgia.

It is the quiet loss of stability—and most people feel it long before they understand it.

The Life People Expected

There was a time when the promise wasn’t wealth.

It was stability.

If you showed up, stayed loyal, and did your job, you could reasonably expect:

• wages that rose over time
• healthcare you didn’t fear using
• housing you could plan around
• the ability to raise a family without constant anxiety

Life wasn’t easy, but it was buildable.

You could imagine next year.
You could recover from a setback.
You could get sick without financial ruin.

No one called this prosperity.

It was simply normal.

That normality didn’t vanish overnight.

It was replaced.

When the Ground Stopped Holding

Nothing dramatic announced the change.

Work simply began demanding more while giving less.
Experience stopped protecting people.
Loyalty stopped mattering.

Wages froze while costs kept climbing.
Healthcare became something people hesitated to use.
Changing jobs started to feel dangerous instead of empowering.

People stayed put not because they lacked courage—but because losing healthcare, risking an even worse situation, or taking the pay cut that often came with moving felt too risky.

What looked like choice from the outside felt like constraint from the inside.

Something fundamental had shifted.

Naming the Shift

The shift followed a logic, even if most people were never given its name.

The economy stopped being organized around supporting stable lives and became organized around extraction.

Not building.
Not sustaining.
Extracting.

What Extraction Means in Real Life

Extraction is not about making things or creating shared value.

It is about taking as much as possible out of the economy without putting anything back.
It is about maximizing profit above everything else.

Everything becomes redesigned around a single question:
How much can people be forced to pay before they push back?

Diversions are created so people don’t recognize what is happening.
Attention is moved from crisis to crisis—often deliberately.

The impact on everyday life is unmistakable:

• wages that don’t go up
• costs that never stop rising
• care that keeps shrinking
• lives lived under constant pressure

All while money and power move upward.

When a system extracts instead of supports, people do not fail.

They get drained.

How Everyday Life Changed

Healthcare didn’t become something people feared using by accident.

It shifted from a focus on care to a focus on extraction—profits disguised as efficiency.

Education stopped being a public benefit and became a debt sentence that followed people for decades. Tuition costs exploded, and the money was extracted upward.

Housing stopped being affordable. The goal was no longer shelter, but maximizing price and extracting profit.

Food prices soared. We are told it is inflation, but prices continue to rise because higher profits can be extracted.

None of this happened because people suddenly became irresponsible.
None of this happened because it made life better.

It happened because human survival itself became a profit stream.

And this is not limited to any one political party or ideology. Both have implemented extraction. The disagreement is not whether to extract—but how fast, and with how much pain.

When Pressure Builds and Nothing Is Named

When wages don’t go up but profits must keep growing, the middle class disappears.

The result is a country divided between the very rich and everyone else.

Hard work stops paying off.

Money is pulled out of corporations, public institutions, infrastructure—everything. The consequences are ignored because the damage is not accidental.

As stability disappears, communities begin to fray.

Rising crime is not a mystery, and it is not a moral failure.

When wages don’t go up, when work no longer provides security, when housing is unstable, when addiction and mental health go untreated, and when public institutions are stripped of resources, disorder follows.

People living under constant pressure make desperate choices.

Neighborhoods hollowed out by extraction lose the informal structures that once held them together—jobs, trust, shared expectations, and belief in a future.

Crime rises not because people suddenly became worse, but because the conditions that restrained it were deliberately dismantled.

Fear becomes another tool of misdirection.

Extraction spreads into:

• healthcare
• housing
• education
• debt
• fear

And when that pressure isn’t named, attention has to go somewhere.

That’s when enemies appear.

Immigrants.
Elites.
The radical left.
The fascist right.
“People who hate the country.”

The targets change.

The function does not.

Blame moves sideways instead of upward.
People fight each other instead of the system extracting from all of them.

Division is not an accident.

It is how extraction protects itself.

The Great Misunderstanding

People didn’t stop working hard.
They didn’t become weaker.
They didn’t lose their values.

They were placed inside a system that drains instead of replenishes—and then told the consequences were their fault.

The American Dream did not quietly fade away.

It was dismantled slowly enough that most people blamed themselves instead.

The Pattern Becomes Visible

Once you see this pattern, it becomes difficult to unsee.

Stability replaced by pressure.
Support replaced by extraction.
Solidarity replaced by blame.

Different names.
Different decades.

Same design.

And the most dangerous part of the pattern is not the hardship itself.

It is how long people live inside it before they realize what changed.

Why This Matters

This is not just about economics.

It is about recognition.

About naming the shift people feel in their minds and bodies long before they find the words.

Once the shift is named, the next question becomes unavoidable:

If this system was designed, it can be redesigned.

But first it must be called out.
Then people must see it.
And then they must act.

The pattern must be broken.

Written by Jerry Elman, December 21, 2025

I worked inside large American corporations long before anyone used the term DEI.
From 1980 to 2006, I spent twenty-six years at Eastman Kodak, during a time when it was the most recognized brand in the world, one of the largest employers in the country, and one of the most insulated corporate cultures I have ever experienced.

This is not a political argument.
It is a record of how systems actually worked — and what happened because of it.

People today talk about eliminating DEI as if it distorted a fair system.
They imagine a past where opportunity was equal and advancement was based purely on merit.

That past never existed.

I know, because I lived in it.

A City Within a City

Kodak in 1980 employed about 66,000 people in Rochester NY, with 45,000 at the plant where I spent most of my career. It was not just a company. It was a city.

It had its own power plant, water system, buses, trains and tracks, fire department, security force, tens of thousands of engineers, and more than 2,000 construction workers. Almost everything was done internally.

When an organization becomes that large and that self-contained, its culture becomes self-reinforcing. The same assumptions circulate, the same people rise, and the same blind spots harden over time.

My First Week: Ignorance Before Hostility

In my first week at Kodak, the Jewish holidays were approaching. I asked my supervisor what the policy was for taking time off. Some companies allowed personal days; others required vacation.

He had never heard of the Jewish holidays.

I immediately backed out of the conversation and said I would use vacation days. Fortunately, he didn’t internalize what my question meant. It simply never occurred to him that he was talking to a Jewish employee.

That moment told me something important:
this was not a culturally aware environment.

The Warning

A few days later, I casually mentioned that I was Jewish. A Jewish coworker overheard me and pulled me aside.

“Don’t ever say that again,” he said.
“It will destroy your career.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.
He was explaining the system.

For nearly twenty years, except with people I absolutely trusted, I let others assume I was a white Christian male. Women couldn’t hide. People of color couldn’t hide. I could.

That difference shaped everything I saw.

Before DEI, Opportunity Was Controlled

Before DEI existed, training and development were not neutral resources. They were gatekeeping mechanisms.

Women, Black employees, Hispanics, Jews, and non-Christians could apply repeatedly for training and be denied year after year. Without training, you were never “qualified” for the next job.

This is the part of the merit story people forget.

When people say, “We should only promote the most qualified,” they ignore the fact that many people were never allowed to become qualified.

That was not accidental.
That was the system.

How Failure Was Manufactured

Minorities and women were watched more closely. They were written up for bending rules that white men bent every day without consequence. Those write-ups created a paper trail designed not to improve performance, but to justify removal.

At the same time, white Christian men were assumed to have potential. They were mentored, developed, forgiven, and protected.

Failure was not discovered.
It was manufactured.

What Changed When I Became a Manager

Everything became clear once I became a manager.

I reviewed personnel files. I met the people behind them. And I discovered that many of the so-called “problem employees” were smart, capable, and dedicated.

They were being disciplined for things I did routinely without consequence.

That is when I did what would later be called DEI — before it had a name.

I mentored them.
I got them into training programs.
I assigned them complex, visible projects.

When the barriers were removed, they succeeded.

Several became supervisors and managers. Some advanced further than I ever did.

That is not what happens when standards are lowered.
That is what happens when standards are finally applied fairly.

Skilled Trades: Bias Without Cover

Later, when I managed skilled trades groups, the discrimination was blunt.

Black workers applied for training every year. None were accepted. They were always used as helpers.

Racist slurs were written on lockers in magic marker. Managers laughed. Nothing was done to stop it.

Women in the trades endured sexual comments and jokes and were denied mentoring and training. They worked harder simply to overcome assumptions made before they even started.

Meanwhile, less capable white men advanced without resistance.

Again, not because of merit —
but because of access.

What DEI Was Actually Trying to Fix

DEI did not invent unfairness.
It responded to it.

It did not lower standards.
It challenged who had access to them.

It did not create incompetence.
It exposed how much talent had been ignored, blocked, or wasted.

What Actually Destroyed Kodak

There is a popular myth that Kodak failed because it missed the digital camera.

The people who worked there know that is not true.

Kodak did not fail because of digital technology.
Kodak failed because of its culture — and the lack of DEI.

The company had the knowledge. The engineers knew where the industry was going. The workers knew what needed to change.

What Kodak lacked was the ability to listen.

For decades, leadership was filled almost entirely from the same narrow group. People rose through the ranks not because they were the most capable, but because they fit the existing model. The Peter Principle became systemic.

When decisions failed, leadership never questioned itself. The solution was always another workforce reduction.

Certainty replaced curiosity.
Hierarchy replaced insight.
Difference was filtered out.

Kodak even entered the digital camera business — and still failed — because the same culture distorted execution. Decisions were made far from expertise. Reality was ignored.

DEI implemented years earlier would have changed that.
It would have diversified leadership, surfaced dissent, challenged assumptions, and forced the company to listen to people who actually understood the work.

Kodak did not lack innovation.
It lacked humility.

What Is Being Recreated Now

Today, the effort to destroy DEI is not restoring merit. It is restoring a hierarchy.

When mentoring, development, and inclusion are stripped away in the name of “fairness,” the result is not neutrality. It is advantage for the same group that always had access before — primarily white men — and exclusion for everyone else.

I lived in that system.

It did not produce excellence.
It produced confidence without competence.

Calling that “merit” does not make it so.

What Remains

Kodak once employed 66,000 people in Rochester.
Today, about 200 remain.

That collapse was not caused by one missed invention.
It was caused by a culture that filtered out difference, elevated certainty, and ignored the people who had the answers.

Why This Matters

This is not ideological.
It is historical.

DEI was not the beginning of unfairness.
It was a late, imperfect attempt to correct what had always been there.

Anyone who lived before it knows that.

Why Changing Paths Doesn’t Change Outcomes

Written by Jerry Elman – December 16, 2025

Look at any transit map.

Different colored lines.
Different routes.
Different scenery.
Different vehicles.

Trains. Buses. Side streets. Detours.

And yet—if every line terminates at the same station, the differences are cosmetic.

Different routes do not produce different destinations.

History works the same way.

The Map Is Older Than We Are

Every society believes it is traveling a new road.

Different leaders.
Different ideologies.
Different technologies.
Different grievances.

But history does not track intentions or slogans.
It tracks behavior and norms.

When societies:

• excuse cruelty,
• normalize hypocrisy,
• abandon restraint,
• demand obedience only from others,
• and destroy trust in their institutions,

they arrive at the same place.

The map is older than we are.
And it has very few surprises left.

America’s Original Advantage: Coping

America was built by people who understood something essential:

Life is not fair.
It never has been.
And it never will be.

Our success came from coping, not entitlement.

People failed and adapted.
Lost and recovered.
Disagreed without destroying the system holding them together.

That capacity produced the most innovative, prosperous, and stable period in human history.

Resilience wasn’t praised.
It was assumed.

It was a norm.

When Coping Was Replaced by Blame

Over the past forty years, that norm eroded.

We didn’t lose adversity.
We lost the ability to tolerate it.

Small frustrations now provoke rage.
Minor setbacks are treated as existential threats.
Disagreement is framed as danger.

Instead of asking, “How do I adapt?”
We ask, “Who did this to me?”

We blame tools.
We blame technology.
We blame institutions.
We blame leaders.
We blame neighbors.
We blame strangers.

Anyone but ourselves.

Blame feels like action.
It isn’t.

It’s movement in the same direction—faster.

Hypocrisy Becomes the Operating System

I have watched countless people condemn the behavior of others
while behaving in exactly the same way.

They justify their attacks as necessary or righteous—
while condemning identical attacks on them as immoral or dangerous.

They say they are preserving civility
while actively destroying it.

This is not hypocrisy at the margins.
It is hypocrisy at the center.

And institutions cannot survive it.

Institutions rely on shared standards:

• restraint
• due process
• reciprocity
• legitimacy

When those standards apply only to opponents, institutions hollow out.
They become weapons instead of stabilizers.

When institutions collapse, society collapses with them.

History has never recorded a different outcome.

New Norms for Me, Old Norms for You

A defining feature of our moment is asymmetry.

People behave according to new norms of aggression and dehumanization
while demanding others respond according to old norms of restraint.

They attack. Others must absorb.
They insult. Others must remain civil.
They escalate. Others must de-escalate.

When the same force is returned, they cry victimhood.

This rests on a single assumption:

Only I count.

A society cannot function on one-way rules.

Speech Is Not the Threat — Embrace Is

We have made a fundamental error.

What people say is not the threat.
What people do is.

Speech—even hateful speech—has no power unless it is embraced.

Silencing speech feels decisive, but it avoids the harder question:
Why are people choosing to accept these ideas?

A society with strong norms can hear bad ideas and reject them.
A society with weak norms panics at words because it no longer trusts itself.

Suppressing speech is not strength.
It is an admission of fragility.

Faith Bent to Serve the New Norms

This asymmetry has entered religious life as well.

Scripture once associated with humility, restraint, mercy, and self-examination is selectively rewritten to excuse cruelty and domination.

Grace for “us.”
Judgment for “them.”

Others are expected to obey moral standards that the self no longer honors.

That is not faith.

It is moral exemption.

And every serious moral tradition warns against it.

Leaders Are Not the Cause — They Are the Beneficiaries

We keep blaming Washington.

That is backwards.

Presidents, Congress, courts, parties—right and left—are not the enablers of this shift.
They are the beneficiaries.

Society gave them permission.

When leaders attempt restraint, compromise, or adherence to older norms, they are punished. They face ridicule, accusations of weakness or betrayal, and are often thrown out of office—replaced by those willing to escalate.

That tells us everything.

Norms do not flow downward.
They flow upward.

Leaders follow incentives.
Institutions mirror expectations.

The Generation That Squandered the Inheritance

There is another truth we must face.

The Baby Boomers inherited the sacrifice of the Greatest Generation.

They inherited discipline forged by war, restraint shaped by survival, institutions rebuilt by people who knew how fragile civilization is.

Holocaust survivors would be aghast at what followed.
So would the generation that defeated fascism.

We were the generation of peace, love, music, sex, and social justice.
We marched. We protested. We challenged authority.

And much of that was necessary.

Then we abandoned restraint for self-expression.
Responsibility for self-interest.
Truth for convenience.

We became the most educated generation—and the first to casually discard science, expertise, and the norms our parents built with blood and sacrifice.

No president did this.
No institution did this.

We did.

And we refuse to step aside.

“Never Us” Is Always Said Before the End

Every collapsing society believed it was different.

More advanced.
More enlightened.
More moral.

History records none of those claims as correct.

Because history does not judge belief.

It judges behavior.

Explain how we are different—behaviorally—from those who collapsed before us.

Different street names do not change where streets go.

Hate always produces the same consequences.
Always.

The Virus of Normalization

This does not happen overnight.

It spreads.

One lie lowers the cost of the next.
One act of cruelty makes the next easier.
One exception becomes the rule.

No single moment feels decisive.

That is how contagion works.

The Last Station

At the beginning of every route, there are many exits.

As patterns repeat, exits disappear.

Eventually, there is only one place left to go.

Societies do not collapse suddenly.
They arrive.

They arrive at the station history has marked again and again.

Different vehicles.
Different scenery.
Same destination.

The Only Way the Route Changes

Routes change only when people change their behavior.

If enough people said:

• I will hold myself to the old norms
• I will not excuse behavior I condemn in others
• I will withdraw permission for cruelty

leaders and institutions would change immediately.

Because they always follow.

The Question That Remains

Every generation believes it is choosing a new road.

But the map does not care what we call it.

All routes lead to the same station
unless behavior changes.

The destination is not a mystery.

The only question left is whether we will recognize where we are
before the last stop is announced.

Written by Jerry Elman

Listen to the language.

Vermin.
Infestation.
Contamination.

Talk of blood.
Talk of purity.
Talk of a people who must be removed because they are poisoning the nation from within.

Crowds cheer.

Leaders shout warnings of invasion and decay.
They speak of enemies among us.
They promise protection—if only the nation is cleansed.

This sounds familiar.

It should.

This is the 1930s.

A society under strain.
Economic fear.
Loss of pride.
Resentment searching for someone to blame.

Leaders learn a lesson history has taught again and again:
Hatred mobilizes faster than solutions.
Contempt binds people tighter than hope.
And once you describe human beings as vermin, empathy becomes optional.

Millions cheer.
Others stay quiet.

They don’t like the language—but it works.
Besides, it’s not aimed at them.

Not yet.

“It’ll burn itself out.”
“It’s just rhetoric.”
“It can’t happen again.”

History records this moment clearly.

No.

This is not the 1930s.

This is today.

The same words are back.
The same tolerance is back.
The same belief that it will go away on its own is back.

Only the names have changed.
Only the country has changed.

The pattern has not.

Listen again—without the comfort of distance.

Political figures openly use words like vermin and garbage.
They warn of contamination of our race, our blood, our culture.
They speak of invasion and rot—of people who do not belong.

They do not whisper these words.

They shout them.

And tens of millions cheer.

At the same time, people are taken.

Masked agents.
No visible identification.
No warrants shown.

People disappear from workplaces.
From streets.
From homes.

And again—people cheer.

Because it’s the scum.
The invaders.
The garbage.

Yes, we are not yet at concentration camps.
Yes, we are not yet at genocide.

But history does not begin where it ends.

It begins with language.
It begins with tolerance.
It begins when cruelty stops shocking.

And the pattern is identical.

The Pattern, Plainly

History shows the same sequence every time:

1. Language dehumanizes
2. Tolerance becomes permission
3. Limits are tested
4. Law adjusts to normalize cruelty and corruption
5. Violence is excused, then celebrated
6. Silence becomes survival
7. The point of no return arrives quietly

Hitler did not leap to the end.

He tested.

A speech.
Then a law.
Then a symbol.
Then a purge.

Each step asked the same question:
How far can I go?

When there was outrage, he slowed.
When there was acceptance, he advanced.
When there was cheering, he accelerated.

Every step that met little or no resistance became permission to go further.

What shocked one year became tolerable the next.
What was tolerable became legal.
What was legal became mandatory.

By the time people said, “This is too far,”
the system already knew it wouldn’t stop.

Denial did not block the pattern.

Denial trained it.

Then the symbols changed.

New flags appeared—symbols of loyalty, not shared citizenship.
The old flag remained, but only as decoration.

The new flag demanded allegiance.

The leader became inseparable from the symbol.

He always wore it.
He never removed it.

Because it was no longer clothing.

It was identity.

Wear it and belong.
Refuse it and explain yourself.

Neutrality became suspicion.

Law followed.

Quietly.
Methodically.

Laws were rewritten.
Enforcement became selective.
Corruption was excused as necessity.

Cruelty stopped being a failure of the system.

It became the system.

“Well, it’s legal,” people said—

as if legality has ever guaranteed justice.

Rallies grew.

The leader did not speak.

He screamed.

Every sentence was anger.
Every phrase a threat.

The crowd shouted back words of elimination:

Vermin.
Garbage.
Destroyers.
Contamination.

Vermin became normal.
Garbage became patriotic.
Elimination became “necessary.”

Accusation replaced evidence.

Once accused, people were no longer treated as citizens.

They were targets.

People began to believe harm was justified.
Then murder.

And when it happened, the killers were not condemned.

They were praised.
Put on stage.
Thanked.

Violence was no longer the problem.

Violence became proof of loyalty.

Daily life changed.

Civility collapsed.
Anger filled ordinary interactions.

Families split into enemies.
Friendships ended.

Allegiance mattered more than blood.

History began to disappear.

Books were banned.
Libraries purged.
Education turned into loyalty training.

Complexity vanished.
False narratives replaced truth.

People were no longer taught how to think—
only what to repeat.

There was always an economic engine beneath the cruelty.

The wealthy tolerated it because markets don’t punish it immediately.
The desperate believed because they lost everything.

They were told their suffering wasn’t random.

It was taken.

Taken by them.
The vermin.
The garbage.

Once pain had a target,
it stopped asking hard questions.

It started demanding punishment.

And the middle?

The middle hid.

“I don’t want to be a target.”
“I’ll keep my head down.”

Silence felt safer.

So the pattern locked in.

The wealthy tolerated.
The desperate believed.
The middle disappeared.

And the leader gained what mattered most:

Permission.

What is disappointing—but not surprising—is that Jews of all people should recognize this pattern.

We have lived it repeatedly since the Roman Empire.

Expulsions.
Blood libels.
Ghettos.
Pogroms.
Camps.
Holocaust.

It is why, in a world of 8.1 billion people, there are only 16 million Jews. (yes million!)

And yet some Jews are embracing the same language.

Vermin.
Garbage.
Invasion.

Believing alignment with power will protect them.

History has never rewarded that belief.
Not once.

Aligning with power has never saved Jews.
Silence has never protected us.
Believing “this time is different” has never worked.

If I were to embrace this language—
to chant it, excuse it, benefit from it—

my parents would have seen it as the most unforgivable betrayal of humanity.

They survived the Holocaust.

Not so their child could become part of the fire they barely escaped.
Not so their suffering could be twisted into permission for cruelty.
Not so survival itself could be used to justify becoming what hunted them.

To help repeat that pattern—even quietly—
would have made their survival feel tragic rather than meaningful.

I do not get that choice.

If their lives are to mean more than endurance,
if survival is to stand for more than breath drawn after catastrophe,

then speaking is not optional.

Silence has never saved us.
And it never will.

All religions claim that life is sacred.

All life is God’s creation.

Until it isn’t.

Until power becomes more important than principle.

Then scripture bends.
Faith becomes costume.
Belief becomes branding.
Symbols replace conscience.

People wear religious signs while cheering cruelty—
believing this will please God.

But no God worthy of worship
has ever been impressed
by obedience purchased at the cost of humanity.

We are not yet at the point of no return.

That matters.

But every day—every week—we are tested.

Each test asks the same question:

How much more will you allow?

Each green light—
especially the quiet ones—
moves the line forward.

Turning around does not become impossible all at once.

It becomes impossible
step by tolerated step.

Believing “it can’t happen here”
is like believing you’re such a good driver
that you don’t need seatbelts.

You may be careful.
You may be experienced.
You may never have crashed before.

But crashes don’t happen because people plan them.
They happen because conditions change faster than reaction time.

Every society that collapsed believed it was
too stable,
too moral,
too advanced
to lose control.

Confidence didn’t save them.

Only the names have changed.
The country has changed.

But the pattern is the same.

Each step produces the same consequences it always has.
Each silence authorizes what follows.

It’s like watching a movie when you already know the ending.

You recognize the opening scenes.
You spot the turning points early.
You know where it’s headed.

And still—most people stay seated.

Every generation that later said,
“We didn’t realize what was happening,”
had already dismissed its warnings as:

political
exaggerated
ideological
alarmist

History remembers those warnings very differently.

One Simple Thing You Can Do

This isn’t about shouting or converting anyone.

It’s about not being silent.

If this unsettled you—
if it named something you’ve felt but couldn’t quite articulate—

pass it on.

Send it to one person.
Or two.

History doesn’t always ask for grand gestures.

Sometimes it asks only that we stop pretending
we didn’t see what was right in front of us
—before the choice disappears.

When Violent Rhetoric Becomes Authority, History Stops Being a Metaphor

Written by Jerry Elman

This is no longer theoretical.

We are living through a moment when people who speak casually—sometimes approvingly—about killing have crossed an invisible but historic line. What once existed as provocation, ideological theater, or media bravado has moved into real executive authority over the use of military force.

That transition matters more than any election result, legal argument, or naming dispute. History tells us this is the moment to pay attention—because it is the point after which events no longer remain hypothetical.

Steve Schmidt recognized it immediately. Schmidt is not a protestor or a partisan voice shouting from the sidelines. He helped elect George W. Bush, advised John McCain, and spent decades inside the Republican national security apparatus. He knows how wars are sold, how language is softened, and how accountability fades long before consequences arrive.

His warning was brief—and chilling:

When the bodies come home, they will call it a victory.

That sentence is not hyperbole.
It is recognition.

This essay is not about titles or statutes. It is about what happens when violent rhetoric attaches itself to real power, and when restraint is recast as weakness rather than as civilization’s last defense.

Once that line is crossed, history accelerates.

When Language Stops Signaling Limits

Nations do not slide into catastrophe because leaders suddenly become cruel. They slide because cruelty stops sounding like cruelty.

Language changes first.

Killing is no longer tragic; it is “necessary.” Civilians are no longer people; they are “collateral.” Enemies are no longer human beings; they are abstractions to be eliminated.

At that stage, violence no longer feels moral or immoral. It feels managerial.

And at that moment, a familiar reassurance always appears:

“But hasn’t the other side done this too?”

Yes.
And that fact should terrify us—not comfort us.

Different leaders. Different ideologies. Same behaviors. Same outcomes.

History does not repeat because people forget facts.
It repeats because people repeat behaviors while insisting their intentions make them different.

Vietnam: Certainty as the Seed of Disaster

Vietnam did not begin with hatred.
It began with certainty.

Leaders were convinced they were morally right. That belief justified extraordinary authority. Civilian deaths became necessary. Body counts became measures of success. Dissent became disloyalty.

Privately, officials admitted the war could not be won. Publicly, they demanded sacrifice anyway.

Vietnam did not collapse because leaders were ignorant or wicked.
It collapsed because certainty replaced accountability.

Certainty always does this work first.

When Killing Becomes Administrative

Modern violence no longer requires rage, mobs, or even hatred.

It requires process.

Killing now happens through briefings, designations, chains of authorization, and remote execution using drones and other technology. Responsibility is divided so thoroughly that no single person performs the whole act—and no single person feels fully accountable.

One official identifies a “target.”
Another confirms intelligence.
Another authorizes action.
Another executes it remotely.
Another records it as a success.

Each step feels rational.
Each step feels contained.
Each step feels professional.

Distance completes the cycle.

The person who dies is never seen. Their family is never known. Their name is replaced by a category. Civilians killed alongside them dissolve into language so familiar it barely registers anymore.

This is how killing becomes sustainable in democracies.

Not because people suddenly become brutal—but because brutality has been broken into pieces small enough for ordinary people to tolerate.

Technology did not create this danger.
It perfected it.

When death is delivered remotely, conscience has no natural place to land. There is no blood. No noise. No aftermath demanding reckoning. Just confirmation that an action occurred—and then silence.

Once killing becomes administrative, escalation becomes easy. Targets expand. Definitions loosen. Oversight fades. What would once have provoked outrage becomes background noise.

Power becomes most dangerous when it believes it is exempt from restraint.

The Truth Beneath the “Deep State”

There is some truth beneath the phrase “deep state,” even though the term has been distorted beyond usefulness.

Modern democracies develop permanent systems of power: military command structures, intelligence agencies, surveillance architectures, defense contractors, and national security bureaucracies designed to endure across administrations. This is not conspiracy. It is structure.

These systems do not reset every four years. They accumulate precedent. Temporary authorities linger. Emergency powers harden into routine tools.

The Cold War entrenched this logic. Nuclear weapons demanded constant readiness. Secrecy was rebranded as safety. Oversight became inconvenience.

After 9/11, the pattern intensified. Surveillance expanded. Detention powers widened. Targeted killing blurred geographic and moral boundaries. Extraordinary measures were declared temporary—and then never fully surrendered.

No secret cabal orchestrated this.
No single villain commanded it.

It advanced through incentives, routines, and institutional self-protection. Each step felt reasonable. Each decision built quietly on the last.

The myth says the “deep state” is an enemy to be destroyed. History shows something more dangerous: entrenched power does not need villains. It needs permission to operate without scrutiny.

And strongmen do not dismantle these systems. They merge with them.

Once violent rhetoric is fused to permanent machinery, restraint no longer depends on law, ethics, or oversight—but on individual restraint alone.

History has never lasted long under that condition.

Executive Power and the Illusion of Necessity

Every democracy that collapses believes its expansion of executive power is justified.

Congress is slow. Courts are inconvenient. Debate is framed as obstruction. Authority is concentrated not because it is moral—but because it is expedient.

This is how democracies hollow out while congratulating themselves on decisiveness.

The most dangerous shift occurs when people stop asking whether anyone should possess such power and argue only about who should wield it.

By then, consent has already vanished.

Convenience has replaced legitimacy.

When Fear Turns Inward

America’s darkest chapters did not require foreign enemies.

McCarthyism destroyed lives through accusation alone. Due process collapsed. Fear policed speech. Silence became survival.

Japanese American internment required no abandonment of law. It was legal. Courts approved it. Fear did the work.

Immigrant panics followed the same script again and again—Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Eastern European, Muslim, Latin American. Always dangerous. Always disloyal. Always urgent.

Each generation believed its fear was justified.
Each generation was wrong.

Fear does not need monsters.
It needs permission.

Legality Is Not a Brake

Some of the worst abuses in American history were legal.

That is not reassuring.
It is the warning.

Law often lags behind morality. Sometimes it camouflages abuse. Courts frequently ratify power in real time and apologize only decades later.

Legality does not stop harm.
Sometimes it disguises it.

Media, Dehumanization, and Silence

Power does not act alone. It requires repetition, framing, and silence.

Language softens violations. Crimes become policy disputes. Suffering becomes abstract. False balance replaces truth. Access replaces accountability.

Dehumanization does the rest. Enemies become categories. Threats become abstractions. Once people no longer count as fully human, their suffering becomes negotiable.

Most catastrophes do not require mass enthusiasm.
They require enough people to look away.

Bureaucrats follow procedure.
Journalists choose safer words.
Citizens tell themselves it isn’t their problem.

Silence finishes the work.

What This Looks Like on the Ground

These decisions are never paid for by the people who speak most loudly about strength.

They are paid for by soldiers and their families.

When violent rhetoric becomes policy, soldiers are deployed faster, with less clarity and shrinking margins for error. Missions become ambiguous. Objectives shift midstream. Rules blur. What once required deliberation is reframed as urgency.

Soldiers are asked to absorb the moral weight of decisions they did not make—carrying uncertainty on their backs while others speak in abstractions far above them.

The cost does not end when deployment ends.

It follows them home—into sleeplessness, hyper-vigilance, moral injury, and the quiet realization that what they were asked to do will never fit neatly into language or ceremony. Some carry that weight for decades. Some do not survive it at all.

Their families carry it too.

Spouses live inside waiting. Children learn how to read absence and silence. Homes reorganize around anxiety and reintegration that is never clean. Every new escalation reopens old wounds. Every new “necessary” mission revives unasked questions.

This is what disappears when killing becomes administrative and war becomes rhetoric.

The people most affected are always the least visible—and the most loyal.

Why This Matters to Democracy

This is not a side effect.
It is a signal.

When a democracy allows its soldiers to absorb consequences that leaders do not, it has already begun severing power from responsibility.

Armies under democratic control are meant to be restrained by clear objectives, public scrutiny, and civilian accountability. When those restraints weaken, the military becomes a buffer between decision-makers and the cost of their choices.

That is the danger.

Once soldiers carry what leaders no longer will, war becomes easier to authorize, easier to repeat, and harder to stop. And when families absorb the burden silently, the distance between power and consequence widens further still.

History shows that democracies rarely fall because citizens oppose the military.

They fall because the military is asked to carry what the political system refuses to face.

Why This Moment Demands Attention

This moment is different for one reason:

The gap between violent rhetoric and real authority has collapsed.

What once lived in commentary now governs systems that can kill. What once sounded rhetorical can now be executed.

History tells us what follows.

Soldiers are sent without clear plans.
Civilians die without names.
Dissent is rebranded as threat.
Failure is baptized as victory.

And societies discover—too late—that they confused confidence with competence and certainty with strength.

The Mirror Has Shown Us This Before

History does not repeat because it hides.
It repeats because people recognize it only after the pattern hardens.

The mirror is not partisan.
It reflects behavior.

We have seen this before. We know how it ends. We know who pays the price—and it is never those who speak most loudly about strength.

The question is no longer whether the path is familiar.

The question is whether we will finally stop telling ourselves:

This time will be different.

The Pattern My Parents Survived — and America Is Repeating

Written by: Jerry Elman

People keep asking me the same question:

“Why do those people act that way? Why can’t they see what’s so obvious?

And every time I try to explain the answer,
people shake their heads,
look away,
or refuse to believe me.

But the answer isn’t political.
It isn’t ideological.
It isn’t even new.

It’s a pattern human beings fall into when they’re afraid, angry, manipulated, overwhelmed, or convinced they are the only “good” people left.

And what terrifies me most is this:

While we’re busy asking why “those people” act the way they do…
they’re asking the same thing about us.

That’s the pattern.
But to explain why, I have to start somewhere else —
with the moment the past stood up inside me.

THE DAY THE PAST STOOD UP INSIDE ME

How a Single Sentence on TV Unlocked the Warnings My Parents Never Spoke

I used to believe my parents’ past was behind me.
That what they lived through belonged to another lifetime, another continent, another world.
That what they survived had already delivered its lesson to history, and that history had absorbed it.

I don’t believe that anymore.

The moment that changed everything wasn’t dramatic.
There were no sirens.
No explosions.
No breaking news alert announcing,
“History is repeating itself.”

It was just a sentence I heard on television —
spoken casually,
like it was nothing,
like it was normal now.

And suddenly,
I wasn’t watching the news anymore.

I was watching the past walk back into the room.

It wasn’t the headline that did it.
It was a tone.
A laugh.
A crowd cheering for something that should have made them go silent.

That’s when I felt it — the shift.
Not outside me.
Inside me.

The part of me shaped by my father —

the young man who survived by hiding in the forests of Poland,
who learned that silence could mean the difference between life and death —
woke up first.

Then the part shaped by my mother —
the young girl who learned that danger could look like a neighbor one day
and a murderer the next.

Something in me stood up then —
the part born from what they never said.

And I heard myself think,
not as an American,
not as a voter,
but as the child of two people who lived through the moment when ordinary life turned into something that could no longer be called normal:

This has happened before.

Not in the same country.
Not with the same flags or slogans.
But with the same pattern.
The same behavior.
The same blindness.
The same excuses.

That was the moment I knew:

I wasn’t watching politics.
I was watching memory come alive.

And memory doesn’t care what year it is.

I grew up in a house where few things were said,
but everything was felt.

My father’s silence wasn’t peaceful —
it was armored.

My mother’s silence wasn’t refusal —
it was survival.

Between the two of them, I learned a truth long before I had the words:

Sometimes the past isn’t in the past.
Sometimes it’s inside the children who never lived it.

That’s why that sentence didn’t feel like news.
It felt like an inherited memory.

Because this is what I heard:

“Some people don’t deserve to be treated like human beings anymore.”

Not said with fear.
Not said with outrage.
Said with comfort.

That’s when the past rose inside me —
because my parents would have recognized that sentence instantly.

Not the wording.
The meaning.

The quiet permission.
The withdrawal of empathy.
The division of society into “us” and “those people.”

The smoke before the fire.

THE PATTERN BEGINS LONG BEFORE THE FLAMES

Most people think the beginning of a tragedy is obvious —
a leader shouting,
a mob marching,
a law being passed.

But collapse doesn’t kick the door in.

It seeps in through the cracks.

It begins when:

• jokes stop being jokes
• cruelty becomes casual
• certainty replaces curiosity
• neighbors stop trying to understand each other
• empathy becomes optional
• labels replace names
• outrage replaces thinking

That’s the pattern.

And once you see it,
you can’t unsee it.

THE LABELING PATTERN

We’re not debating anymore.
We’re diagnosing each other.

People don’t say:
“What do you think?”
They say:
“You must be one of those people.”

We call strangers:

• libtards
• fascists
• snowflakes
• racists
• traitors
• Jew-haters
• idiots
• sheep

Most of the time,
the people we’re labeling have no idea what offense they supposedly committed.

They’re just following the same emotional current we are —
a culture where we attack people not for what they mean,
but for what we assume they are.

When we stop seeing each other as individuals,
we become caricatures of fear.

THE EVENT THAT REVEALED THE PATTERN

Several months ago, I was at an event talking with people I knew and people I didn’t.
A conversation drifted toward a female candidate who had lost an election.
I made a simple point about campaign strategy — nothing personal, nothing insulting.
And I had voted for her.

But a young woman I’d never met snapped into anger.
Her whole demeanor shifted.
Her voice sharpened.
And she fired a label at me like a weapon:

“Victim blamer.”

No pause.
No question.
No attempt to understand what I meant.
Just an immediate verdict — delivered with certainty and contempt.

It was so sudden, so disproportionate, that it stunned me.

There was a time — not that long ago — when our norms simply didn’t allow people to personally attack strangers over a single sentence.
Not over a disagreement.
Not over a misunderstanding.
Not over a nuance lost in conversation.

Today, we skip past listening, skip past clarifying, skip past curiosity —
and go straight for the accusation.

This moment wasn’t about politics.
It was about how quickly we turn people into enemies now, even when we don’t know them at all.

Later I realized:

She wasn’t reacting to me.
She was reacting to a pattern inside her —
the belief that disagreement is harm,
analysis is betrayal,
and that anyone who steps outside her emotional narrative
is an enemy.

That’s how divided we’ve become.

THE EVERYDAY COLLAPSE OF DECENCY

And just yesterday, I saw it again:

At the Spectrum store, returning unused equipment for a nonprofit I help run, I checked in and saw there were only two employees working and five people ahead of me — all of them getting new phones, which I knew would take a long time.
I realized I’d be waiting awhile.

I sat down at one of the tables and put the equipment on the table.

I pulled out my phone and responded to emails.

One of the employees came over and quietly asked if I was returning equipment.
When I said yes, she told me she’d take me next.

About 5 minutes later she called me up. I explained that I had equipment our organization was no longer using and wanted to have it taken off our account.

She typed in the account number, paused, and her smile disappeared and the look on her face became fear. She hesitated before she turned from the computer and said:

“Sir, It’s a commercial account. You have to call the commercial group to cancel this before I can take it. I wish there was something I could do, but that’s how things are set up.”

I wasn’t thrilled about it, but I said,
“I understand.”

She looked surprised at my response.
She then told me she would write the phone number down on a slip of paper so I wouldn’t have to look it up.
She reached for a small pad of paper and a pen, wrote the number carefully, tore off the sheet, and handed it to me.

I thanked her for her help and as I turned to leave, she stepped out from behind the counter and said:

“Sir, I appreciate your patience and understanding. Most customers scream at me when they have to wait to turn in equipment and and especially when I can’t take care of what they came in for.
Some threaten me.
But you were respectful and understanding.

Most people are not like you.”

She then gave me her card and told me to come right up to her at the counter when I come back. She thanked me again and went back to take care of the next customer.

Walking out, I stopped and thought for a moment.

Imagine that —
being thanked for basic decency.

That’s how low the bar has fallen.

Most people think this is about politics.
It isn’t.
This is about something older, deeper, and far more dangerous.

THE HARD TRUTH

People aren’t your enemies.
Fear is.
And fear behaves the same on all sides.

People don’t become enemies because they are evil.
They become enemies because they are afraid.

Afraid there won’t be enough.
Afraid of losing control.
Afraid of being erased, replaced, silenced, or forgotten.
Afraid the world no longer recognizes them.
Afraid of a future they don’t understand.

You have your fear.
They have theirs.

You carry yours with logic.
They carry theirs with certainty.

And certainty always feels like truth —
even when it’s only fear wearing a costume.

That’s why your question has no answer you like.
Because the moment you recognize their fear,
you are forced to confront your own.

People don’t want to do that.
It is easier — infinitely easier —
to call someone an enemy
than to see them as a frightened human being
trying to survive a world that makes no sense.

THE DANGER ISN’T THAT YOU DISAGREE.
The danger is that you refuse to accept they are human too.

This is the part of the story I inherited
long before I had words for it.

My parents lived through the moment
when neighbors stopped seeing each other as neighbors.
Not because of ideology.
But because of fear.

Fear reshapes people.
Fear reorganizes society.
Fear convinces good people
that cruelty is justified
and silence is safety.

Fear makes the “other side” look less human
even when both sides want the same simple things:

To belong.
To feel safe.
To believe tomorrow won’t betray them.

Every side thinks the other side is tearing the country apart.
Every side thinks the other side is the threat.
Every side believes they are the heroes of the story.

And when both sides are convinced
that only the other side can destroy the nation…

that is when a society collapses.

Not from violence.
From certainty.

THE MANIPULATION PATTERN

And here is the part we don’t want to admit:

We are being played.

Every day, algorithms, media outlets, influencers, political strategists, politicians, and fundraising machines pump fear into our bloodstream.
We take the people speaking on TV at their word —
even though most of them aren’t reporting news.
They’re not doing journalism.
They’re doing performance.

Most people don’t realize that cable “news” isn’t regulated as journalism at all.
It’s legally allowed to operate as opinion and entertainment, not verified reporting.
They can call it news — but they don’t have to follow the standards of news.

It’s entertainment dressed up as certainty, commentary packaged as truth.
And we let it shape our fears as if it were fact.

Real news is investigative.
Real news is factual.
Real news is verifiable — not emotional, not ideological, not curated to keep you angry.

And the fact that major news networks today publicly brand themselves by political or ideological identity tells you everything you need to know.
They’re not delivering truth —
they’re delivering teams.

But truth doesn’t have teams.

There is no conservative truth.
There is no liberal truth.
There is not even a “religious truth.”

There is only one truth —
and everything else is commentary.

Today’s “news” has become the snake oil of the past —
sold with confidence, packaged with certainty,
and swallowed by people who desperately want relief,
even if the bottle has no medicine inside.

Just like the old snake-oil salesmen,
the goal isn’t to inform you.
It’s to keep you coming back,
to keep you frightened,
to keep you loyal.

And in that environment, truth isn’t the product.
Emotion is.

Fear sells.
Fear mobilizes.
Fear controls.

Both sides do it.
Both sides justify it.
Both sides believe the end is noble enough to excuse the means.

It doesn’t matter who’s in power —
the same erosion continues.

The goal isn’t democracy.
It’s dominance. And profits.

And once fear takes over,
the line between democracy and manipulation becomes paper thin.

Someone always steps in to inflame the fear.
Someone always figures out how to profit from panic.

My parents lived through that pattern.

THE MIRROR WE REFUSE TO FACE

We keep asking:

“Why do those people act that way?”

But we never ask:

“Why am I acting this way?”
“Why have my norms changed?”
“Why do I feel justified in treating strangers like enemies?”

We don’t realize we’re being shaped
by the same forces shaping the people we condemn.

We must all slap ourselves awake and ask:

Are these my norms —
or did someone else plant them in me?

Because we all used to be better than this.
And if we’re honest,
we don’t quite recognize who we’re becoming.

WHY I WROTE ECHOES OF HISTORY

People ask me why I wrote another book.

Especially on this topic.

Because I recognized the pattern —
not with my mind,
but with my inheritance.

Because when I heard that sentence on TV,
“Some people don’t deserve to be treated like human beings anymore,”
the past rose inside me.

Because the smoke of pre-collapse behavior
smells the same in every generation.

Because my parents survived the fire,
but I am living in the smoke.

Because history doesn’t repeat in events —
it repeats in people.

And once a society stops insisting
that everyone deserves to be treated like a human being,
the story that follows is always the same.

Because once the past stops speaking through the living,
it becomes optional.

And once the patterns of history becomes optional,
it becomes repeatable.

The people who lived through the fire —
and its consequences —
are no longer with us.

So in their memory,
we will not forget.

We will set an example for others.
We will defend the norms
they survived for.

And we will prove that we heard their silence —
by acting in the one way they always hoped we would:

by breaking the pattern
before it repeats.

What my father, a Jewish partisan who fought the Nazis, would say to America as it slides toward fascism.

Written by Jerry Elman, October 22, 2025

This may be the most important thing I will ever write. Please share it with as many people as you can. We have to light a fire — in our hearts, in our communities, and across this nation — before it’s too late.

I never thought I’d live to see the warning signs again — the slogans, the lies, the worship of power over truth. But here we are.

When I look at what’s happening in America today, I think about my father — a Holocaust survivor and Jewish partisan who fought the Nazis from the forests of Eastern Europe. And I ask myself: What would he be doing now?

He wasn’t a soldier in uniform or a man with a title. He was one of roughly 25,000 Jews who escaped the ghettos, organized others, and fought back against fascism when the world had turned its back.
He knew what tyranny looked like — and how ordinary people, blinded by fear or pride, made it possible.

If he were alive today, he would recognize what’s happening in America for exactly what it is. He would see the rise of lies over truth, division over decency, power over justice — and he would not be silent.

He would know that fascism doesn’t return wearing swastikas. It comes wrapped in flags and false promises.

And he would tell me, as he told others back then:

“When you see the signs, don’t wait for someone else. Do something.”

His warning wasn’t meant for Europe alone. It was meant for every generation that forgets how fragile freedom really is.

1. They Would Recognize the Pattern

Survivors were masters at reading danger. They would hear the language of dehumanization — “vermin,” “enemies within,” “traitors” — and know exactly what it means.

They’d remember how it began: with slogans and speeches that sounded patriotic. With the promise to “restore order,” “protect tradition,” and “make the nation great again.”
They’d remember how good people, moral people, convinced themselves it was all harmless politics.

But fascism always begins with small lies that become moral rot. They would say:
“We’ve seen this before. The slogans change. The hate does not.”

2. They Would See the Danger in Those Who Think They’re Immune

The survivors knew that fascism seduces not only the cruel, but the fearful — those who crave order, certainty, and safety.

And they would see, with deep sadness, how even many Jews today have fallen into that trap: believing they can side with power, play along with authoritarian movements, and somehow be protected.

They’d remember that in Germany, too, many Jews thought they could find safety by joining the Nazi Party, serving the regime, or proving their loyalty. A few gained privilege — for a while. But history was merciless. When the purge came, they were sent to the same camps, the same graves.

Fascism does not make exceptions. It uses people until it destroys them.

My father would say to them today:
“You think you’re safe because they call you a friend? You’ll be next when they need another enemy.”

3. They Would Not Wait for Permission to Resist

The partisans didn’t wait for permission. They didn’t ask who was in charge. They saw what needed to be done and acted.

They would be doing the same now — organizing small networks of resistance in communities, synagogues, libraries, and living rooms. Not violent resistance — moral and civic resistance.

They’d run voter drives, teach history, challenge disinformation, and build coalitions that cross political lines. They would know that fascism thrives when truth dies, and truth dies when people stop fighting for it.

4. They Would Refuse Silence and Neutrality

Silence was the first victory of fascism then, and it’s the same now.

The survivors learned that neutrality always sides with the oppressor. They would challenge rabbis, Jewish leaders, and politicians who hide behind polite caution — those who say, “We don’t want to get political.”

They would say, “If you are silent when democracy is being dismantled, you are not neutral — you are helping the destroyers.”

And to Jews who support authoritarian leaders because they claim to “stand with Israel,” my father would ask: “At what cost?”

Because support that comes from hate is not friendship. It’s bait.

5. They Would Appeal to Humanity, Not Just Politics

My father understood that fascism feeds on fear and division. He would talk not about party or ideology, but about humanity.

He would sit with conservatives, immigrants, and working families who feel left behind. He would talk about freedom, decency, responsibility — and how democracy depends on ordinary people defending one another.

He would remind them that once fascism wins, no one is safe — not the faithful, not the patriots, not even those who cheered the loudest.

6. They Would Teach and Testify, Again and Again

If the survivors were here, they would be traveling across America — to schools, churches, and civic halls — telling their stories again, even when people didn’t want to listen.

They’d tell how it started with propaganda that blurred truth and made cruelty seem normal. How some people laughed, others shrugged, and only a few stood up.

They’d tell of Jewish collaborators who believed cooperation meant survival — until they were taken, too.
They’d say: “Evil never stays satisfied with the first victims.”

And they’d warn America: when you hear talk of “purifying the nation,” when you see books banned, journalists threatened, and judges mocked — that’s not politics. That’s the road to tyranny.

7. They Would Demand Action, Not Pity

My father didn’t survive to be pitied. He survived to rebuild, to bear witness, and to demand responsibility. He would say:
“Talk is not enough. Act. Organize. Write. Vote. Protect the truth. Don’t wait for action — take action.”

Because the smallest act of courage — the refusal to repeat a lie, the defense of someone being attacked — is how civilizations are saved.

8. They Would Defend Democracy — Chaos and All

Survivors valued democracy not because it was easy, but because it was human. They knew that dictators promise order, but deliver fear.

Democracy, with all its chaos, arguments, and imperfections, is the only system that lets conscience breathe.

They would tell us that democracy isn’t fragile because it’s weak — it’s fragile because it depends on courage.

They’d say: “Freedom isn’t free. You have to earn it every day — with truth, decency, and vigilance.”

9. They Would Warn the Comfortable

Survivors would not be surprised that fascism has found new life in America. They would recognize the complacency of those who say, “It can’t happen here.”

They would remind us that Germans said the same thing in 1932. So did Italians, Hungarians, and Poles.
Each believed their institutions were strong enough — until they weren’t.

And they’d ask us: “Do you think your Constitution will save you if you won’t defend it?”

10. They Would Leave Us with a Message

If my father and his fellow partisans were here, they would tell us:
“You are the last line. There is no one coming to save you.”

They would remind us that fascism always starts with words — and always ends with silence.

And they would tell us what they told each other in the forests, when hope seemed lost:

“We may die, but on our own terms.”

The Problem We Face Now

The No Kings rallies are a start — but they are not enough. There is nothing happening that is consistent or constant.

This is not like the 1960s, when people filled the streets every day, every weekend, in every city across the nation. When the noise outside the White House was never-ending. When President Lyndon Johnson could hear the voices of protest from inside — and still defended their right to be there.

Today, we are only out when it’s convenient for us. We post memes instead of marching. We share outrage instead of organizing. People are spending more time preaching to their own circles than reaching across divides.

The fascists are marching again — and we’re sending memes.

They see our weakness. They know our will isn’t there to truly take them on.

This weekend, there will be no organized protests. Next week, none. The week after, none. Meanwhile, they are hard at work — every day, non-stop.

And that’s why they are winning.

The partisans would never have accepted that. They knew survival required more than words — it required relentless, united resistance.

The Silence of Our Own Leaders

Jewish organizations remain largely silent. The Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations, the American Jewish Committee, and countless others stand on the sidelines while democracy crumbles and fascism gains strength.

Many have taken what they call a “support for Israel is worth the downside” approach — accepting alliances with those who despise us, as long as they say the right words about Israel.

There is no courage among most Jewish leaders, nationally or locally.

They speak at conferences and issue statements, but not one of them is leading a moral uprising. There is not a single Elie Wiesel today — no one with the moral authority to speak truth to power, to unite us, or to remind the world that silence in the face of evil is complicity.

My father and his generation of survivors would have been appalled. They would have seen this cowardice for what it is — a surrender of conscience for comfort, of leadership for access.

The Survivors’ Final Lesson

America doesn’t need more outrage. It needs courage — the kind my father carried into the woods, not just for revenge, but for life itself.

They would tell us that saving democracy starts small — with decency, truth, and the refusal to hate.

The survivors are mostly gone now, but their warning is not:
Freedom dies when we stop defending it.
Truth dies when we stop telling it.
And humanity dies when we stop caring.

My Reflection

I often ask myself what my father would be doing today if he saw the hatred, division, and blindness spreading across America.

I think he’d be doing what I’m trying to do now — speaking to anyone who will listen, especially those who’ve never heard our story before. He’d be organizing quietly, reaching across divides, and calling people back to decency and truth.

He’d remind me that democracy isn’t an inheritance. It’s a daily fight — one that can’t be won with anger, only with courage.

And I can still hear his voice:

“If you wait for someone else to act, you’ve already lost.”

We all like to believe we would have resisted if we’d lived in those times.

But the truth is — we are living in those times again. And history is asking the same question:

Who will stand up this time?

The survivors are gone. But their warning is still echoing — if we have the courage to hear it.

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About Jerry Elman
Author of Miracles Through Hell, A True Story of Holocaust Survival and Intergenerational Healing.
A second-generation Holocaust survivor, educator, and speaker on the lessons of history, hate, democracy, and moral courage.