Repetition

I think we should panic, at least a little.

I'm sitting some 3,000 miles from home, in a very well lit, very well preserved, library from around 1850. There is a nice looking man in a collared shirt sitting across from me, he has his laptop and many pieces of paper strewn about with scribbled handwriting. He looks to be around 45. My first thought is that the United States could never upkeep a building this beautiful. My second thought is that the United States could never host a place where business men, college students, and retired elderly women all join together to use communal wifi and enjoy community programming. My third thought is that the library of the United States may simply cease to exist, this third space is willfully neglected, under appreciated, and now just underfunded.

Yesterday night I read an article in The Atlantic where its Editor in Chief Jeffery Goldberg outlined, and quoted, how the Trump administration accidentally added him to a group chat that outlined war plans in great detail. This morning I woke up to see that the co-director of No Other Land was attacked at home. None of these things make drinking my morning coffee any easier.

These events may seem entirely unrelated, the library, the Signal group chat, Mr. Ballal's unforgivable treatment. The link to me is simple, we are digressing to a point most of us active, young people have only ever read about, or seen in movies. Somehow almost all my classes this semester have converged and are reading different accounts of the period just before WWII. Remarkably they all seem to relay the idea that there was a sense of calm, warmth, general misunderstanding. I don't know if this is an accurate representation, but man do I look around and see a similar glint in the eyes of those who just don't care!

Columbia University has decided to give into the government's will and overhaul their protest guidelines and entire departments, German tourists are detained in solitary confinement in some sort of misunderstanding that I cannot wrap my head around, all while Venezuelan prisoners are in a limbo akin to purgatory, since the Department of Justice has decided that Justice does not include listening to a Judge's orders. I am, shocked, I am appalled, but I am not surprised.

I am, however, mildly surprised at the general sense of ease that seems to be prevalent throughout my peers and those living in the US in general. Two weeks ago I was researching Fullbright scholarship opportunities that have been revoked, and now I am wondering if I can still work at my work-study job next semester since my university went on a hiring freeze. No one seems to care.

Where is the movement that spurred us through COVID when it was acceptable to cyber-harass your peers into posting a black square? Where is the outrage, where is the peer pressure? Have we gone so far as to lose sight of the absurd reversal of historical precedent that we have marched ourselves into? We seem to have fallen into a hole of complacency that feels wholly unacceptable, but entirely predictable.

This is not a case of it won't affect me. It already has, and it will only continue. We need to spur the movement ourselves since those in charge are not stepping up to the plate. This calm is not just before the storm, the storm is knocking on our doors and seeping through the windows.

We cannot let it be too late.