in light of today's events, i want to share a story i was told during a study abroad summer in italy, where i took a class on the rise of fascism.
the picture below is the site of a mass grave. captive partisans were brought here by nazis, forced to dig, and then executed on the spot.
our tour guide, who was delighted by our group because tourists never ask about fascism, walked us forty minutes to this vineyard in the middle of nowhere. there were no signs on the road. us americans were worried about trespassing, since no one on the property was around.
he took us to this grove and explained that the partisans were young communists from the nearby town of arezzo. local land & business owners, even their parents and friends, had eagerly ratted them out because they saw nazi occupation as bringing order back to the region.
we learned that many in central italy still to this day see nazis as heroes and americans as villains, because the nazis got rid of those troublesome punks while the americans brought bombs and tanks.
then our tour guide informed us that his own grandfather was one of the partisans executed here.
he told us that the nazis lined them up one by one and shot each in the head, and more times in the chest. but human beings are hard to kill, and it was known that even this kind of brutality was survivable.
so they threw grenades into the grave, just to be sure.
this was standard practice.
nestled in the bushes nearby with zero fanfare stands a single solitary monument. there are monuments just like it all across italy.
what stuck with me was not just the cruelty of the nazis. it was the callousness of the turncoats, who never stopped believing that they had done the right thing.
whether by nature or nurture, there is a class of people who will always prefer death and destruction over a reduction in profits. they cannot be reasoned with. they cannot be taught empathy. they will watch young people shot, dismembered, and buried alive, and they will say that god is good.
there is no reform. there is no compromise.
believe what your eyes see. listen to what your heart tells you. we are surrounded by systems that exist to launder guilt and naturalize structures of oppression, so that we side against our senses.
but you know exactly what is happening. you do.
we are waking up from a dream of peace in the interregnum of a war that never went away. the fruits of our nation's conduct, a largely bipartisan project from the start, have arrived by the truck-full. it did not come out of nowhere. it's not new, or unprecedented, or even particularly surprising.
what it IS, however, is the present. it's not a history book. it's not a mass grave. it is happening right now.
and right now, this moment and each moment after, is the *only* moment you will ever own.
stories will be told about this era for years to come. but only we are its authors.
