Kristallnacht

From 9-11 To 11-9: One American Tragedy To Another!

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The 21st century began with the horrific attack on September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3.000 civilians of many nations.

It ushered in a 15 year period of turmoil, division, and tremendous spending to fight terrorism and wage two unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It has led to persecution of Muslims in America, and promotion of nativism, racism, and antisemitism.

It has caused the two major political parties to fight each other in a way that prevents any cooperation on just about anything.

And then, in the midst of all this chaos and anxiety, along came a charlatan, a rookie in politics, a crooked businessman, a narcissist to the extreme, who was able to convince working class white males that he was their “Superman”, and would end terrorism, crime, and fight Wall Street, all fabrications.

So from the 9-11 tragedy, we went to 11-9, November 9, 2016, the declared victory of Donald Trump, who has caused more division and hatred than anyone in the past 15 years.

And he won due to the quirks of the Electoral College, having only one serious opponent who won electoral votes, but only winning 46 percent of all votes cast.

And November 9 is also the day in 1938 when we had Kristallnacht, the “Night of the Broken Glass”, when thousands of Jews became victims of a pogrom, as businesses and synagogues went up in flames and ushered in the beginning of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, which killed six million Jews by 1945.

With the rise of white supremacy, and characters such as Richard Spencer and David Duke backing Donald Trump’s attacks on Mexicans. Muslims, and all immigration under attack, one can sense that we might be moving toward Fascism, with only the scandals around Donald Trump giving us the hope that his agenda may be stalled and prevented permanently.

Commemoration Of Two Events On November 9: One Wonderful, One Tragic!

Ronald Leave a comment

Today, November 9, marks two events, both in Germany, which changed the world–one in a positive way, the other in a very tragic way!

On this day in 1989, the Berlin Wall, which symbolized the horrors of Communism, came down spontaneously in East Germany, leading to the downfall of the Soviet Union two years later, and the end of the Cold War between Russia and the United States led alliance of NATO.

The collapse of the wall gave the world hope for a peaceful future, no one being aware that the Persian Gulf War just over a year later helped to lead to the new age of terrorism, which had already begun, but accelerated after US forces were stationed in Saudi Arabia, the home of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Islamic faith.

Fifty one years earlier, in 1938, in Nazi Germany, we had the tragedy of Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, when the Nazis unleashed an attack on Jewish citizens and property, including synagogues ransacked and set on fire, along with businesses, shops, and the destruction of cemeteries, and the arrest of thousands and the death of many Jews in a vicious manner. This is now seen as the beginning of the Holocaust, and sadly, while there was condemnation of the actions on November 9 and 10, the international community did little more than condemn verbally.

So the later date marked the end of Communism in Eastern Europe, while the first marked the growing menace of Nazism and anti Semitism, and the horrors of anti Semitism are still a reality in the world today!