Advoken's Blog

(Edited Remarks of Ken Germanson, March 6, 2022, to a virtual service of the Community of the Living Spirit, a nondenominational worship group in Waukesha WI. The complete service may be viewed here.)

Can our nation and society survive the multiple challenges facing all of us today: the threats against democracy by forces of the right; the divisiveness that has crippled our Congress and turned too many State Legislatures into passing absurd anti-democratic laws; the growing impact of climate change that could eventually doom millions and millions, the ongoing pandemic and, now in March of 2022, the attack by Russia’s Putin on Ukraine.  It goes on and on?

I’ve heard many say that never before have we been in such dire straits.  Sadly, too many also feel hopeless.

Yes, things are a horrifying mess, but I look back just in the past 92 years of my life to see we’ve been here before. 

I was born August 8, 1929.  Less than three months later, Oct. 29, the stock market crashed, bringing on the Great Depression that lasted through the 1930s.  One out of every four Americans were unemployed at the peak; it was a worldwide Depression with little hope on the horizon.  My dad, a tannery worker, was lucky because he was not laid off, but his wages were cut so drastically that my parents lost ownership of our house.  We continued to live there because the owner couldn’t sell the house, paying $35 a month rent.  I was too young to understand why I couldn’t get all the toys I wanted, but we always had food on the table and a weekly treat of a pint of ice cream to share among the five of us for Sunday dinner.

It was a dark time, indeed.[i]

Then, in November 1932, when the nation was at its lowest point, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in his inauguration speech of March 4, 1933, he gave us these encouraging words:  “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”

FDR brought us the New Deal, fueled by the input of pragmatic idealists like Harry Hopkins, Frances Perkins and Wisconsin’s own Edwin Witte, often called the father of Social Security.  FDR’s leadership created jobs through the WPA, PWA and CCC, gave us Social Security for seniors and collective bargaining that prompted millions of workers to organize and create a better life for all working Americans.  And much more.[ii]

Voters seeing the progress and a better life ahead, supported Roosevelt overwhelmingly in the 1936 election as we slowly rose out of the depression.

September 1, 1939.  Hitler attacks Poland and overwhelms it in 30 days.  In six short weeks in spring of 1940, Hitler took over Belgium, the Netherlands and France.  His troops are poised on the shores of the English Channel, as he begins to terrorize London with his bombs.  The tragedy of Dunkirk occurs as 330,000 British troops have to be evacuated across the English Channel in June of 1940, and on June 18, Winston Churchill strengthened British resolve with one of his most famous speeches saying their resolve in the face of devastating bombing would be “their finest hour.”[iii]

Later in 1940, my uncle, who lived with us and helped raise me and my brothers, was drafted and sent to Camp Polk, Louisiana.  Then came, Dec. 7, 1941 and the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor.  Within months, the prospects of stopping the well-prepared forces of Japan and Germany seemed bleak indeed.  German submarines were sighted and one even landed on the shores of New Jersey while Japanese subs posed a threat to the California coast.  In April 1942, the U.S. surrendered the Philippines to the Japanese and the Bataan death march occurred.  Photos of skeleton-like U.S. soldiers struggling to walk while guarded by Japanese soldiers traumatized Americans that month.

Even in the heartland city of Milwaukee, we practiced air raid drills.  My dad was a block warden, charged with making certain our neighbors’ homes weren’t emitting any lights during the air raid drills.  Meanwhile, seniors in my high school were being drafted even before graduation, and the rest of us boys knew the draft board would get us eventually.  Virtually every house on our street had a blue star flag (signifying a family member in the service) and, sadly, a few had a gold flag.

In 1945, the war ended and we cheered. 

The good cheer didn’t last for long.  Within two years, the cold war began and our country (unified during the war effort) drifted into divisiveness as some of our politicians (Wisconsin’s Joe McCarthy, for example) stirred the up public about the “communist threat.”  Soon, anyone who might have an unconventional idea or supported worker or civil rights was castigated as a “communist.”[iv] 

That feeling grew intense in the 1960s with the Vietnam war.  Many of us who saw early-on that the war was wrong began speaking out, marching or campaigning to get out of Vietnam.  We were called unpatriotic or accused of being communists.  Meanwhile, our returning veterans reported being spit upon or treated badly.  It was an ugly time.  The division then was as bitter and unbending as we have today.  The basic difference and saving grace then was that neither party – Democrats or Republicans – were 100% in either camp.

Also, in the 1960s, the civil rights battles were raging.  Riots in the summer of 1967 overwhelmed many cities, even prompting Milwaukee’s Mayor Maier to place the city on a weeklong lockdown.  After Martin Luther King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, more than 140 American cities experienced disruptions, some of them violent.  It was a time when racists like Bull Conner, George Wallace and James O. Eastland strutted their nasty stuff.  But many Americans strived to bring peace and equality to society, including King, James Lewis, James Groppi and many more.[v]

Yes, now in March 2022, the future seems bleak to those of us who care about humanity, our earth, economic equality and social justice.

The lessons I’ve learned in my long life is that we must have hope.  As we’ve seen in the past, we’ve emerged from many of the past periods of chaos to create some form of resolution, never perfect, of course, but with a relative level of peace and often positive change.  For some folks, they may find hope in prayer.[vi]

Hope, however, is not enough.  We have to work to make positive changes, just as FDR’s “brain trust” helped lead us out of the Depression and the heroism of our soldiers, sailors and marines led us to peace in 1945.  My hope rests in the millions of ordinary people who are working unselfishly to save the earth from climate change, to heal racial differences, to bring economic justice and to end the pandemic.[vii]  The future of Ukraine is troubling, of course.  Yes, times are bleak, but we’ve been here before.  Ken Germanson, Jan. 22, 2022.

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[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIKMbma6_dc …. or  let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

[ii] FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, 1941 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS “THE FOUR FREEDOMS” (6 JANUARY 1941)

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.

[iii] Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: This was their finest hour. – Winston Churchill That’s the position Britain found itself in the late spring of 1940. Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France had all fallen under the Nazi jackboots. Britain was the only thing standing between Adolf Hitler and control of Europe. With Britain tottering on the abyss, its prime minister, Winston Churchill, gave one of the great rallying cries in world history, the “finest hour” speech of June 18, 1940.  To hear his words, listen here.

[iv] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10155257250556184

“Have you no sense of decency, sir.”  Joseph N. Welch, Army-McCarthy Hearings. June 9, 1954.

[v] “This is a conflict between the forces of light and dark, and in the end there will be victory for justice and democracy because will will triumph . . . If you can’t rub, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl, but keep moving forward!” – Martin Luther King sermon at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on the University of Chicago Campus, April 13, 1956.

• [vi] But those who hope in the Lord
  will renew their strength.
  They will soar on wings like eagles;
  they will run and not grow weary,
  they will walk and not be faint.  Isaiah 40:31

[vii] “All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honour; duty; mercy; hope.” Winston Churchill.