“Write down what you value; what standards you hold
for yourself and for others. Write about your dreams for the future and your
hopes for your children. Write about the struggle of your ancestors and how the
hardship they overcame shaped the person you are today. Write your biography,
write down your memories. Because if you do not do it now, you may forget.
Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the
next year, you will do them. Write a list of things you would never believe.
Because it is possible that in the next year, you will either believe them or
be forced to say you believe them.”— Anthropologist and
journalist Sarah Kendzior, “We’re Heading Into Dark Times: This is How to be Your Own Light in the Age of Trump,” The Correspondent, Nov. 18,
2016
Four years ago, as has happened so often in the past,
this warning might have seemed alarmist. But anyone following the news runs the danger of becoming inured to the
nightmare scenario outlined in the last four sentences in the above quote.
What is at stake is nothing less than the same values
of civilization held up in Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” to his fellow
Athenians, according to Greek historian Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War:
“Our constitution does not copy the laws of
neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves.
Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called
a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their
private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to
reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere
with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the
state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which
we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from
exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon
to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in
those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict
no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make
us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us
to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the
protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or
belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without
acknowledged disgrace.”
Each day brings another assault against what Pericles
called “our chief safeguard.” After four years, none of us can say any longer
that we do not know the threats we face: nothing less than the protection of the
individual citizen, even the most disadvantaged, from harm; the notion that no
man is above the law; and the fate of the republican experiment itself.
Democratic Athens did not endure. We shall see, over
the next few months, if democratic America will.
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