MARCH 15, 2020 – It’s easy to worry yourself sick—oops, bad imagery; it’s easy to worry yourself into a state of extreme anxiety if you consume too much information about corvid-19. Fine, but none of us wants self or any loved one to be among the millions who could fall seriously ill from The Virus.
So what to do? . . . assuming you’ve got a sufficient hoard of toilet paper, which, uh . . . er . . . assumes that in the days ahead you’ll have access to sufficient food be able to maintain a healthful, high-fiber diet.
Buy beans! Except . . . the local supermarket is out of them. Okay, then go for the bunch of very green bananas. And let me yammer about yams!
Yesterday, on my way home from the hoarding hordes at the supermarket, I filled the gas tank at $1.99/gal. The guy ahead of me was filling up his shiny, silver pick-up truck. His tailgate served as a display board for a bunch of anti-government bumper stickers. When the owner emerged from the cab, I could better take his measure—late 60s; clean, stiff jeans; trim, black, nylon, padded jacket; and a neat, black visor cap bearing the image of a handgun under the words, “GUN SAFETY,” and over the words, “I CARRY ONE.”
I thought about this guy’s freedom of expression juxtaposed to the shortages I’d just witnessed at the grocery store—early on in the crisis. And this is in the land of “Minnesota Nice.” The bad news: the immediate rise in my anxiety was not triggered by my smartphone screen.
Yesterday evening, my wife and I distracted ourselves from reality by watching a little horror on TV. Specifically, we binge-watched the last few episodes of Hunters on Amazon. For readers unfamiliar with the series, it’s a fictionalized story inspired by Operation Paperclip—the post-WW II effort by the U.S. government to take advantage of the scientific expertise of former Nazis. In the series, these Nazis wind up plotting to turn America into the Fourth Reich. A group of eight self-directed Nazi hunters, led by a wealthy survivor (apparently—not to be a spoiler) of the Holocaust (and including three other survivors), aided eventually by a persistent FBI agent, foil the plot.
(NOTE: The show has been severely criticized for its theme of revenge, but that is for another discussion.)
The series is replete with flashbacks of the brutal roundups and horrific cruelties of Auschwitz. Anyone who has studied the Holocaust or visited Auschwitz or the Holocaust Museum knows that a few “Hollywood” flashbacks of such barbarism are but shallow jabs with the head of a small pin compared to a thorough description of the real thing . . . let alone the real thing.
In any event, keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust is a good thing—especially in bad times. That memory reminds us in the starkest ways possible, the best and the worst of the human condition. With our memory intact, may we shun the gun and highlight our humanity.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
