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Newsletter Nov. - Dec. 2016
Until the news spread on the 9th of November that Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States and therefore succeeds Barack Obama, that date has been associated in Germany and Europe until now with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and for which stands the open Brandenburger Gate as a symbol for a Europe without borders. However, the date evokes as well memories when Hitler initated the first Pogrom in 1938. That followed the burning of books which had started already in 1933. Throughout history the flame has been mainly an ambivalent symbol. However, there is as well the song with the refrain 'burn baby, burn...'. Before knowing the outcome, I wrote
a little reflection.
Today it is election day in the USA. I wonder where this kind of campaign has taken a country once so proud about its democratic institutions and tradition? The human decency of Obama was something substantial and human. Now it is like mad dogs which have torn up newspapers filled with all sorts of headlines but all far off from the reality lived daily. The politics of Trump is not forgiveable. It will require a lot of fresh air before the stench of bad accusations will have disappeared. As friends in the United States and others predict after the election the crowd aroused by Trump shall not easily go away. The fanatics of the anti state believers are at one and the same time the fundamentalists of a politics of the invisible hand which should rule with an iron fist. The need to distract from own failures means targeting foreigners or migrants as if they are to be blamed for the mishaps and set backs any economy based on tough competition entails. For sure, to be noticed are also the daily crimes against humanity. One woman pushes another woman in front of an incoming train at Times Square station and she dies. We had a similar incidence here in Berlin. This tangency of death makes it all the more surreal when Hillary talks about her love for America and Trump trumpets as if engaged in the battle of Jericho. Perhaps in his perversion of logical thinking, he wishes in reality to let the walls come crushing down rather than erecting them along the Mexican-USA border. But there is a saying when in the woods and about to light a camp fire, it takes but a few more sticks thrown into the fire to make the flames go higher. Now that America is no longer a baby or a fledging nation, but ought to be mature, the crucial question is whether on this day many things will still burn, burn, burn...long after everyone has thought the fire has been extinguished. Lets wish even the last hope in human decency has not been engulfed completed in all the bonfires lit during this election campaign.
Hatto Fischer
Berlin 8.11.2016
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