It Didn’t Happen Here (or Hasn’t Yet)

The men who appointed Hitler to chancellor in early 1933 thought he was a joke but thought that they could appease and control his popular, but non-majority party, the Nazis, by appointing him. Prior, the Nazis were one competing political party in a divided Germany. Hitler was driving across the country to deliver speeches with one hand on a firearm and the other on the wheel as his car was pelted with fruit and rocks. Flag wars among the Social Democrats, Communists, and Nazis spilled from tenements into the streets where conflict was common and sometimes deadly, but early in Hitler’s First Hundred Days, as described in Peter Fritzsche’s book, the non-Nazi flags came down.

The Nazis used a two-pronged approach to take control of Germany. They coerced by sending political opponents to concentration camps. (While anti-Semitism was ubiquitous and being exploited this is before the Nazis took away the rights of Jews.) They coerced by terrorizing political protestors labeling this “counter-terrorism.” At the same time they manufactured compliance by creating the illusion of more popularity than they actually had. They did this by inflating crowd size at their gatherings. Germany was emerging from the Great Depression but more slowly than other countries, but Nazi propaganda exaggerated the economic growth in 1933. From diarists, we learn that Nazism was embraced by former opponents because they felt left out, they felt alone. Vocal opponents were coerced into silence, which created complicity, which created a desire to belong, which Nazis nursed, at least nursed among those they considered desirable.

The comparison to contemporary America and 1933 Germany is stunning. We’re a divided nation. Trump holds a minority of the population captive with their willful ignorance. The GOP thought they could borrow Trump’s political power to their own end, but that backfired. Trump lies about his crowd sizes. He exaggerates his support. He couldn’t control the media but he managed to neutralize it by convincing nearly half the country news critical of him is “fake.” But whereas the first hundred days of Hitler’s chancellorship rallied Germany to unite as Nazis, we’re over a thousand days into Trump’s presidency, and the resistance is the majority.

We have our free press to thank. And Democrats. And all those who support them, openly. We have late night talk show hosts who face Trump’s wrath and ratings’ attacks by criticizing him and, yes, mocking him regularly. This collective action has prevented him from being normalized. But we get maybe a C, at best. It hasn’t been great. Too many people are silent. Too many people who voted for Trump with a delusional hope he would “calm down and become presidential” have not taken accountability and done nothing to correct for that mistake, except blame Democrats for nominating Hillary Clinton, which is a cowardly response.

It could get worse. This election is going to be close, which shows already how damaged this country is, right now. If Trump wins, there could be further backlash to him or a weariness could set in. The resistance to him could shrink, which would make the ones who keep resisting easy to target. As I write this, we have video of cops thanking “counter-protestors” for “helping” them and offering them water. Then one murdered two BLM protestors. This felt similar to Hitler’s brown-shirts who outnumbered the police in Germany in 1933 and beat and killed his political enemies, who in just one hundred days merged with the actual police.

Story of the Story, Absenteeism

This story of the story of “Absenteeism” will likely be longer than the story, which comes in at under 200 words.

Here is the link to the issue, “Absenteeism” is the last story, if you’d rather read it first: https://www.bigtablepublishing.com/post/january-2020

When I write on note cards, I usually sit down without an idea. I take a few minutes to relax, enjoy my music, and let some ideas float by. My mom would take us back to school shopping and tell us to look through the clothes, but she advised us not to take longer than ten minutes to pick out something we liked. Her theory was if you took longer than that, or much longer than that, she wasn’t clocking us, you’d have trouble ever making a decision. I use that advice for writing. I don’t wait for a perfect idea. The first one that seems worth writing about I go with.

“Absenteeism” was a note card write. The flutter Glen felt when he woke up and took a breath is probably identical to one I felt that morning. The clear message he received that it was a level one cancerous tumor that his body would surely take care of without aid probably pairs with my morbid, neurotic but also not very serious thought that maybe my flutter was cancer, because who knows? My dad once said our bodies are probably fighting off all kinds of abnormal cell clusters that we never know about because our bodies take care of them without us ever knowing.

So I did a what if our bodies did tell us about these occurrences?

What makes “Absenteeism” especially funny to me is that I created a whole, as far as I know unique world where our bodies inform us about early levels of cancer that will likely be taken care of without help. I imagine these levels go 1-100, and in this world there is a whole system built around this information. Maybe level 12 is when you make an appointment with your family doctor. But then all I did with it was make a joke about how we feel guilty calling off work, but as my sister likes to say, “There is always truth to a joke.”

Ignoring how much better labor conditions are now than they were before all the labor protests of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American workers are still exploited by big corporations. And corporations tamp down rebellion by buying off mid-level managers, who are paid just enough to feel they’re on the corporations’ side, not on the low-level workers’ side. This operates on the same theory wealthy Americans used in colonial times when they doled out little bits of land to poor whites so that they would have motivation to invade Native American territory and then defend “their” land.

Yes, with a job comes a responsibility to show up for that job, but all over America workers work through colds and the flu and worse, part of this is they can’t afford to miss out on the pay, since low-paid workers rarely get any sick pay, but some of it comes from the fear of displeasing mid-level management, who have power over the low-level workers’ lives. The guilt trip Glen’s manager puts on him when he tries to call off work is barely exaggerated. Of course, she has problems of her own, with a level three tumor in her uterus. She’s also being exploited but her frustration, rather than being directed at who is exploiting her is directed down at the people she can actually control. And, here, compensation matters. It’s naïve to put responsibility to show up for a shift or “integrity” as the only factor. For one thing, Glen’s manager probably feels secure about the healthcare she gets through her job as a mid-level manager. Glen likely doesn’t. Even if he has healthcare, his deductible payment makes an appointment with his family doctor much more of a burden. So he should be calling off more to take care of his physical and mental health. And that’s the last point this story tries to make. Glen is calling off because this message is mentally stressful for him. He doesn’t think he could even concentrate on work, but now he’ll have to.

Let me not leave out that the story is also a joke. It’s supposed to be funny, even if you wouldn’t know it from this write up about it that looks like it will come in almost four times longer than the story itself.

Boston Literary Magazine is the second place I sent “Absenteeism.” The first place rejected it with a comment that they liked the ending. I found that response slightly amusing. It’s barely two-hundred words. The story is mostly a set up for the ending. If you liked the ending, you liked the story, which they probably did, they just didn’t like it enough to choose to publish it. Which worked out fine for me, because I am super happy to have it up at Boston Literary Magazine, which is also the home of my first ever accepted story submission.

Feeding Ducks Bread and Joking about Rape, Fragile Duck

I know not to feed ducks bread and I know not to treat rape lightly. Cyndi and Jenn would have been completely different characters who might have cut up grapes for the ducks. They would also have been completely different characters if they had experienced sexual assault or known a close friend who had or, like me, had read Missoula and/or The Gift of Fear or understood rape culture or known that less than three percent of rapists serve any prison time. Plus they aren’t treating rape lightly at all. Their joking is them processing something unfathomable and terrifying.

Fragile Duck is up at Toasted Cheese, free to read: http://tclj.toasted-cheese.com/2019/19-3/fragile-duck-by-greg-metcalf/?fbclid=IwAR3SHgREO8UOGbhuF6AGtldz-7BBADBdLkxYq_d8fMBkJDpJl_cI-pR674Y

Rebecca and Kelsey, Fragile Duck

Rebecca and Kelsey were two-year-old girls whose friendship I had the good fortune to witness while teaching at the OSU daycare center. Rebecca was so loyal to Kelsey that when we would refer to any of the other kids in the class as her “friends,” she would look straight at us and say, “Kelsey is my friend.” “Yes,” we would say, “but you can have other friends, too.” This did not compute with Rebecca.

When another kid yelled at Rebecca, she would burst into tears, but assertively state: “I don’t like being yelled at.” As teachers we held our breath afraid of the times when Kelsey would somehow upset Rebecca through some act of aggression that toddlers are prone to. Rebecca would be inconsolable for several minutes—a month in toddler time—but Kelsey upsetting Rebecca was rare. Somewhere I have an early draft of my second novel with a dedication to Rebecca and Kelsey. Cindy, in “Fragile Duck,” says to Jenn, “Have all the friends you want. I’m only having one.” I basically owe two-year-old Rebecca a writing credit for that line.

“Fragile Duck” is up at Toasted Cheese: https://tclj.toasted-cheese.com/2019/19-3/fragile-duck-by-greg-metcalf/

This is actually the second blog post Rebecca appears in. First here: https://myfreesentences.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/the-weather-stopped-the-day-temperatures-turned-uterine/

Fragile Duck

Fragile Duck is up at Toasted Cheese, free to read. This is a standalone chapter, chapter five, from my second novel. Back story isn’t necessary to enjoy the story (though I’ll offer some at another time, for fun). This particular chapter is the perfect one to have published because it’s truly a microcosm of the novel in whole. The dynamic between the two main characters of the novel, Cyndi and Jenn, playing out in this chapter, develops throughout the book—not that one, their relationship remains strictly platonic—I mean Cyndi’s reluctance to expand her social circle and the pressure Jenn feels as a result. Hopefully I didn’t give too much away. Here is the link:

Fragile Duck

It’s an 8-10 minute read. Please enjoy and thank you for reading

Elizabeth Warren On My Bumper

I’m cognizant that to many people in my area in Ohio my Elizabeth Warren bumper sticker will be taken as a Fuck You to people driving behind me. Does that mean I put it on as a Fuck You to the people who will view it that way?

America is divided, that suggests a “both sides,” but the disgust from one side directed at the other isn’t hard to trace. Rush Limbaugh got rich and famous not espousing views but ridiculing opposing views. The commodity right-wing talk radio sells is piquing the rage of its audience—rage directed at “liberals.” His success led to copy cats all over the radio and then to an entire network, in Fox News.

Hatred of liberals got Trump elected. A president who blatantly lies to the entire country is beloved by one-third of the country who view his lies as “sticking it to the libs.”

I agree with Werner Herzog who said that Americans are realizing that one-third of them would kill another third of them while the other third did nothing. Except I think it’s one-fifth of them who would kill one-fifth while three-fifths did nothing. Of course, the three-fifths reads that and thinks, We would resist that. So you say, but your unwillingness to “get political” as our bigot president cages children, bullies oppressed peoples, leads “send them back” chants, incites violence against people like me, your complacency in the Trump era means I don’t trust you to have my back.

I’m aware my bumper sticker will increase my risk of being killed in a “road rage” incident. Still highly unlikely statistically but less so because of how Trump’s rhetoric has been normalized by people who voted for him and continue to support him, whether openly or with their silence.

I also agree with Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez who recently said that white nationalists will be welcomed back if they stop being white nationalists. Of course, because you were duped. Most of you were robbed into near poverty by the GOP-propaganda machine that learned they could control you by filling you with hate for “the other,” the oldest trick in the book. But we’re not meeting hate halfway. Your support of our bigot president is itself a form of bigotry. You made Muslims and people of color scared to live in their country.

I don’t have the hatred for you that you have for me. I don’t want to kill you like the threat of white nationalism terror makes clear a significant bloc of Trump supporters want to kill me. But if you read my bumper sticker as a Fuck You, directed at you, then yes, it applies. Until you fix the issues that led you to perceive it that way to begin with, which is 100% on you. After that you’ll just see it for what is actually is: my support for the presidential candidate I think will do the job best.

The Cliffs of Moher

The Cliffs of Moher have stood for hundreds of thousands of years, except they were created by ocean waves eroding the cliff’s base and causing the ledge above to fall, so it would be more accurate to describe the Cliffs of Moher as not having stood for hundreds of thousands of years. They failed to stand. They are a major tourist attraction in Ireland. People flock to them. Then they bird watch because the birds interfacing with the cliffs provide necessary motion in the foreground to appreciate the cliff’s layers of sediment. The sentiment evoked is of time’s slow passing, the geologic pace given context by the ephemerality of the life of the people who walk inside the rock fencing adjacent to a width of ledge outside the rock fencing.

The rock fencing yields and the path expands and veers closer to the cliff’s edge. A sign includes a phone number where a stranger will try to convince people who call their lives have value. One wonders. In a space where time is carving the ground out from under where people walk daily, year after year, people lean over. They dare to look. On the return trip from the cliff’s portion past the stony fence, the safer path behind the wall of knee-high stone feels like only a suggestion.

Helping Stephen King Art

Treasuring artistic creations is simply a narcissistic attachment, the creation an extension of self. So approval from an outside source is required, and it can’t be any outside source. It can’t be anyone who loves you or even likes you a little or anyone anxious to encourage artistic expression in a general way or someone just nice and willing to lie to maintain a sense of their own niceness.

Who does that leave?

People on the Internet. You have to put yourself out there and absorb that criticism from the only people who willingly offer it, strangers on the Internet. Look at Stephen King’s reviews, sometime. Do you think he gets better by reading the five-star reviews by people who wrote about how great and wonderful his books were and added exclamation marks? No, he gets better by reading those five-paragraph, one-star reviews explaining where his books went wrong with well articulated examples.

Wait, is Stephen King getting better, though?

Thanks to the people who tweet at him and tell him the truth because they have no reason to kiss his ass.

Do you tweet to Stephen King?

At. I tweet at him. You don’t tweet to people, you tweet at them, and I don’t just tweet at him. I tweet at everyone. I also write long reviews of the books I read and the movies I watch. You should read them and let me know what you think.

The Guarded Gate: Reviewed

The eugenics movement is a dark chapter in American history we’ve failed to learn from because we’ve mostly ignored it. Shortly after Darwin’s Origin of the Species, Francis Galton suggested England marry the inherently superior and gift them money so they could start having babies to benefit the country by improving its citizenry, positive eugenics. A nation’s citizenry could also be improved through negative eugenics, the reduction of breeding from the undesirables of the citizenry. In America this led to sterilization of people below a certain IQ. Some might be surprised to learn of involuntary sterilizations of “imbeciles,” done legally in the United States, but the even more buried story told in The Guarded Gate, by Daniel Okrent, is the decades of bigotry, spread by the junk science of eugenics, that led to The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924.

Eugenics was pushed through books that sold like James Patterson novels in the early part of the twentieth century, proving by manipulating data that the Nordic race was superior to all other races. The Passing of the Great Race, by Madison Grant, was praised by Theodore Roosevelt, whose letter to the author was used to promote the book in several later editions. Adolf Hitler would cite from the book in speeches decades later. What I learned growing up was that the Nazis showed America the wrongness of the eugenics movement, which is partly true, but what I never learned was that our eugenics movement inspired the Nazis.

The fear of “race suicide,” a phrase made popular by Theodore Roosevelt, was that the supposed superior Nordic race would vanish if immigrants kept coming in from southern and eastern Europe and out-bred those already here. So the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 (The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924) limited immigration from the countries where the supposed inferior races were. (They used countries instead of mentioning races to reduce criticism but there’s no doubt from private correspondence and really from public statements the real aim.) But by then, by 1924, immigrants had already “poured” in from these countries. So they skipped the 1920 census, the 1910 census, and the 1900 census, and based quotas on the 1890 census, only taking in immigrants at percentages that matched the population in 1890, predominantly from the north and west of Europe. This meant tiny numbers of these immigrants could enter in a year. People in mid-passage when the law passed were sent back. In 1939, the SS St. Louis sailed from Germany to America, “the Voyage of the Damned,” on board were 900 refugees from Nazi terror. They were turned away because the immigration quota for the year had already been met. A bill that would have relaxed the quota specifically for twenty-thousand German Jewish children died in the Senate. The wife of the U.S. commissioner of immigration said, “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.” This blatant antisemitism was not uncommon. Polling at the time showed a majority of Americans unwilling to take in escapees from Nazi brutality.

This book is so relevant to our current immigration system being devised by the racist, white nationalist Stephen Miller and implemented by our bigot president, who campaigned complaining about Mexicans “pouring” in and calling them rapists, that it would seem intentional but the author wrote the book not knowing Trump would be elected.

Check Engine Light On

You remote control detonated my check engine light, again, so I guess I’m in that engine block and a brake pad spot where my only option is to pay you 200-1000 dollars to turn it back off.

We have no control over your car’s sensor lights, as we’ve told you before. Our technicians can diagnose why your car’s sensor lights are indicating a problem with your vehicle and quote you a price to fix that problem.

Then the engine light will go off?

Yes.

And that will cost what?

We’d have to identify the problem, could be something small or a bigger problem. Impossible to guess.

Is 200-1000 dollars a likely range for the cost?

It’s likely to be in that range, yes, but it could be more. We perform the diagnostic and then get your okay before proceeding.

It could be more but not less.

It could be less, too.

So I pay you 200-1000 dollars, maybe more, probably not less, and you turn my check engine light off.

No. The light goes off because we fix the problem. The problem isn’t the light. The light indicates the problem.

Hey, the car is running fine. The oil is good, the coolant.

Then why is the check engine light on?

You heard my theory.

I promise we wouldn’t remote control turn on our customers’ check engine lights even if that existed as a thing. The check engine light is an early warning feature that offers the advantage of an early repair, usually cheaper, instead of a more expensive repair possibly following a breakdown and a tow. If the check engine light being on was your car’s only issue you could fix that with a piece of electrical tape over it.

Thanks for being helpful. I’m going with the electrical tape fix.