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.