MAGA’s “promised land”?

a “Brave New World” ?

As we head into the world promised by MAGA, a cautionary reminder of a similar past journey is worth pondering. As individuals, families, communities, human beings we owe ourselves and our descendants awareness and motivation to ensure pain, anguish, and destruction are not the primary fruits of this journey through dystopia.

I am a descendant of a mother who grew up under Hitler; a grandmother who suffered in Stalin’s Gulags; whose uncle was shot down three times (in Georgia, Stalingrad, Paris); whose Grandfather was enslaved on his own farm for 2+ years by the Soviets finally escaping, by foot, in 1947 with all his worldly possessions in a coffee can at the age 69.

WW2 brought millions of people to death and tragedy.

Not all were murdered by Nazis in death camps or mass executions, as were my business partner’s; nor were all killed on battlefields. The world was rife with tragedy.

Yet somehow miraculously here we are today and somehow the world is poised, again, to make the same mistakes.

The 1930s tale begins innocuously enough, perhaps…

In my search for historical pictures & images I stumbled across an old newspaper clipping (see below).

“Translated” into non-Gothic typeface:

An den Herrn Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler- Berlin

Die Heute zu Tiegenhagen im Freiestaate Danzig tagende Konferenz der Ost- und Westprußischen Mennoniten empfindet mit tiefer Dankbarkeit die gewaltige Erhebung, die Gott durch Ihre Tatkraft unserm Volk geschenkt hat und gelobt auch ihrerseits freudige Mitarbeit am Aufbau useres Vaterlandes aus dem Kräften des Evangeliums heraus, getreu dem Wahlspruch unserer Väter: Einen andern Grund kann niemand legen außer dem, der gelegt ist, welcher ist Jesu Christus.

Von dem Herrn Reichskanzler ist inzwischen folgendes Antwortschreiben eingetroffen:

Für die mir Ihrer Zuschrift zum Ausdruck gebrachte treue Gesinnung unf Ihre Bereitwilligkeit am Aufbau des Deutschen Reiches mitzuarbeiten, spreche ich Ihnen meinen aufrichtigen Dank aus.

— Adolf Hitler

Translated into English, the document reads:

The Mennonites of East and West Prussia sent an official greeting to the new Reichskanzler (Imperial Chancellor) Adolf Hitler on September 10, 1933:

Those gathered here today at the meeting of the Conference of East and West Prussian Mennonites in Tiegenhagen within the Free City of Danzig, feel with deep gratitude the great uplifting that God gave our people through your strength of will, and pledge, for our part, joyful cooperation in the building of our Fatherland from the power of the Gospel, faithfully from the Motto of our fathers: “Other foundation can no man lay, other than that which is already laid, Jesus Christ.”

From the Lord Chancellor the following reply has arrived:
I offer my sincerest appreciation and thanks for your Communication, in which you expressed your loyalty and willingness to work together with me to rebuild the German Reich.
-Adolf Hitler

Where it goes from choices like the above, 1933 political decisions, is not something humanity should repeat. However, we appear poised to do so.

“be careful what you wish for, because if you wish hard enough you are pretty sure to get it.”

Betty Leicester’s English Christmas, by Sarah Orne Jewett, in St. Nicholas: a monthly magazine for boys and girls, Volume 23, Part 1. 1883