I am about five years younger than Leslie Epstein but also a cultural child of World War II and the Holocaust. While I agree with many of Epstein’s assertions in his chilling Jan. 6 op-ed, “From hope to despair: A writer’s lament for the nation,” I do not share his pessimistic conclusion that Hitler has been proved correct in predicting the long-term victory of fascism.
Yes, Donald Trump’s reelection indicates that about half of the US electorate accepted, if not embraced, an openly authoritarian leader. Yes, the fascistic belief that some people are lesser beings and unworthy of care or even existence is rampant worldwide. It’s not hard to imagine the Führer looking at today’s world and having a good laugh.
But, with apologies to Walt Whitman, who experienced the bloody mid-19th-century chapter of America’s ongoing civil war: We contain multitudes. Stolen land and stolen people created our capitalist Republic, with its fraught but expansive concepts of democracy and citizenship. The tension between our tribal/particularistic instincts and our cooperative/universalist instincts continues everywhere.
Our nation has indeed taken a giant step backward. Male supremacy, the first particularism, was an overt feature of the Trump campaign, and a majority of white women voters acquiesced. Whatever we call the Trump phenomenon — MAGA, white nationalist, neo-Confederate, fascist — he and his followers intend to put the many challenges to patriarchy back in the bottle. We will find out.
In Epstein’s and my lifetimes, though, Nazi Germany evolved from the most criminal of nations into an exemplar of compassion toward immigrants.
David J. Weinstein
Jamaica Plain
This white, straight male wants no part of the patriarchy
Professor Leslie Epstein’s “From hope to despair: A writer’s lament for a nation” encapsulates one of the prime drivers behind Donald Trump’s win in November: protecting white, patriarchal dominance. Regarding Barack Obama’s election, Epstein asks us to consider “what the American male, white in color and straight in inclination, experienced in that era: a Black president and maybe a Black doctor pressing a stethoscope to his chest; women outnumbering men in every college and approaching equality in power and pay; men marrying men and women marrying women.” This raises a fundamental question that we all should ask ourselves: Do you believe all human beings are created equal or not?
I’m a 64-year-old, straight, white, male Navy submarine veteran, with a queer child (I’m not supposed to say daughter, which I struggle with). I grew up in a household where a cuss word was frowned upon but a racial or religious epithet brought real punishment. My children were raised that way, too. I hate to think that some people might look at me and wonder what side of the aforementioned question I come down on.
I never thought I’d see the day that I had a tinge of shame in being a white, straight male in America. Yet here we are.
Chris McKeown
Westwood
Too afraid to put her feelings into words
Leslie Epstein puts into words what I have been thinking and feeling since Nov. 5 but have been too afraid to actually express. His chillingly accurate analysis of the election and his predictions for America’s years ahead left me shivering and in tears.
Carole Friedlander Lechan
Natick
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Publish date : 2025-01-09 18:30:00
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