Ida Dunmore

I've been doing a little thinking lately about TV and three recent programs I watched on the old Vizio and about how bad things have become with our government.

The Bailouts

The PBS four hour series "After the Fall" on the 2008 financial crisis and  the bank bailouts wound up on Tuesday May 1st. HBO also aired a movie on this subject, "Too Big to Fail" in 2011; James Wood's performance as the infamous Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers was excellent.

Actor James Wood as the CEO of Lehmen Brothers

The bailouts continue to be roundly attacked by zealots of both right and left wing persuasion.

On the right, bailout critics say that the economy should be left alone, the free market will take care of it. These critics also tend to be the same people who criticize government in general and this country of ours is going to hell in a hand basket. The lefties believe the banks should have been left to fail because they needed to be punished.
The unanswered question is "What if the government had done nothing?" The truth is that no one knows for sure, but it is also true that the risk, calamitous world economic collapse, was too great too ignore.

Osama

On Wednesday May second, one year after the raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound, NBC ran a one hour piece, "Rock Center with Brian Williams, about the 'Situation Room' at the White House during taking down of OBL. Shortly before that President Obama had spoken from Afghanistan about winding down the war. The Limbaughs and Hannitys and Republican leaders as well as liberal pundits were quick to criticize the White House for "spiking the football". CNN ran a news story called "Obama punks Romney". And many questioned whether it was necessary to kill him or should he have been taken hostage.

The Ugly

My mind went on an 'Incredible Journey' as I sorted through these views/opinions, or notions as I like to call them.


The ugly truth is that none of these people disparaging government really dislike it. They simply disagree with some current leaders and administrations.

True anarchists point at governments excesses such as Nazi Germany, Mussolini or Tojo, feudal and caste systems, slavery and genocide; exclaming that all governments are evil and the world would be better off without government. Anarchists, at least, have courage of their convictions.
So what's the difference?

The Difference is Explained by Someone Making a Difference

For me, the difference is well illustrated by people like Gerda Weissmann Klein. On Wednesday May second's PBS News Hour, Klein spoke with Judy Woodruff about her horrifying years in Nazi captivity and how the experience has inspired her work. From 1939 until the end of World War II she lived in fear and deprivation. She worked in slave labor and concentration camps, finally being forced to walk in a 350 mile death march.

Gerda Weissmann Klein on the PBS News Hour

As a Holocaust survivor, Gerda Weissmann Klein emigrated to the United States where she has championed the values of immigrants and citizenship. Her autobiography, All But My Life, which has been in print for 53 years, in 62 editions and has been read by countless students around the world. A documentary film based on the book, “One Survivor Remembers,” by HBO and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum won an Academy Award for 1995 and the 1994-95 Emmy. 

Gerda Weissmann Klein Receiving the Presidental Medal of Freedom in 2010

"the importance of the Holocaust should only be too illuminate the fact that it -- that hatred and tyranny and all that is not over. It is going on every single day. And I think that we should have more people come from countries where it is happening. To see the type of pictures, you know, when I see pictures of little children holding battered little things for food, when villages are being burned, this is still going on."

The Connection

During the interview, Klein, a champion of the values of immigrants and citizenship, spoke of wanting to give back to this country. 

"I love this country. I love it with the love that only one who has been hungry and homeless for as long as I have been."

JUDY WOODRUFF: "Finally, do you think the United States is handling immigrants, immigration the way it should be today?"

GERDA WEISSMANN KLEIN: "I don't know that -- having had yearned so much for freedom, you can imagine that that's a very difficult question for me. And I hope and pray that, in the ultimate decision of justice, the heart will win over the brain."

Thinking about what Mrs Klein said, I began to understand the connection. She came to this country to find freedom from slavery and oppression. In the United States, the people are the government, the government is the country, the country is the government. Without the government there would be no country, no United States.
Like my 
To give back, in her later years Klein became a human rights and citizenship activist.
As for me, a survivor of kidney failure and a couple near death experiences, at this point of my life, I'm an Ida Dunmore. If I had fully understood how short life is, I would have done more to give back.

Then I thought, wait a minute; Gerda Weissmann Klein, now 87, founded Citizenship Counts (http://citizenshipcounts.org/) in 2008. Maybe it's not too late.