I’ve been watching the Atlantic Crossing miniseries on PBS Masterpiece. It tells the story of the Norwegian royal family during World War II. I couldn’t help being especially moved by the first episode, in which the Norwegians, secure in their geopolitical obscurity and history of neutrality, keep telling each other — with feigned confidence — that no one has ever attacked a neutral country, and the British would never allow a German invasion. Then suddenly the Germans are there, and they find themselves on the run — their faces reflecting the stunned realization that the things that could never happen have happened, and their lives have been altered forever.
There are those who will call me paranoid, but when I see people marching in the streets of my community, promoting an ideology that makes race a moral category, I see a parallel. When I see store windows broken, people singled out and bullied for their political views, and books banned, when I hear that criticism of the government must be muzzled due to a national emergency, I see a parallel. When I’m told that passion, not reason, must guide our policies, I see more than a parallel.
