The recent coverage of the Holocaust memorial ceremonies unsettled me. It made me wonder if remembering matters anymore. I’m not saying that the genocide of millions of people should be forgotten. What I fear is that what was promised after the fact, a kind of moral chastening for humankind, the total bankrupting of racist thought, has been.
Elon Musk gives a Nazi salute to stir Trump’s inauguration audience. He urges Germany’s far right to forget the past and reclaim lost glories. Trump’s vice president’s autobiography, which just returned to the top of the New York Times’ bestseller list, offers a paean to white grievance. And Mr President’s threats to invade, to annex, to rename, to demean, to disregard all come together in the restoration of white power. None of them remembers.
The testimonies offered at the various ceremonies were harrowing, but the most powerful words I heard were uttered not about the past but about the present we all share. “There is a lot of evil in the world right now,” a schoolgirl said, “and we just need to learn to love better.”
As I sat in my disquiet, I wondered who out there is even capable of teaching love and then ran through my list of the possible sources of global evil. What I couldn’t shake was that she had laid bare Americans’ bargain to make themselves great again in exchange for stopping to remember. It is all just so dismal. Maybe Flinty will come to the rescue, but, if not, spring is around the corner. Soon we’ll be able to go outside without boots and coats and gloves and scarves and toques and just be in the sun.