the white rose

There is a new movement afoot, The White Rose Revolt.  I have a few thoughts on this movement. The White Rose was originally a student led revolt against the fascist HItler, as opposed to the present movement against the fascist Donald Trump.  The leaders of the original movement were Hans and Sophie Scholl.  One of the most intriguing verses of the “bible is,

“Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt – how…he surprised you on the march when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear.  Therefore…you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”  Deut. 25:17-19  The worst that we can do to someone is not to merely kill him, but make it as if he never was.  We can do that by blotting out his memory, yet we forget Sophie Scholl and remember Hitler.  As I look at my life, I feel comforted that I am better than some people, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Donald Trump, other sociopaths, but then I think of how I am not close to the real mensch that I could have been.  I realize that in my greatest fantasies I am not the person that Sophie Scholl, Fred Mayer and Louis Zamperini were.  There are many, perhaps almost all, people better than me.  There are not only those more courageous and admirable in actions, but those much wiser.  I’ve always understood that in each generation there will be a prophet who will tell us what we need to know.  There are those amongst us now, but we stopped listening in 1980.  Now the prophets we listen to are the Gordon Gekkos of the world.  Politicians now treat the public as complete idiots.  The question is whether the public is generally stupid because they are or because politicians treat them like they are.  I think any new movement should start by telling the truth.  It shouldn’t make silly promises, crude insults or lies but rather simply tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear?