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Ex-U.S. Rep. Sam Gejdenson Wednesday at WNHH FM: “We’re going to turn it around.”
Yes, a lot of people have lost their minds. It’s not your imagination.
Yes, crazy ideas about Covid-19 or vaccines or climate change are leading plenty of people, including decision-makers in statehouses and governor’s mansions, to make crazy, deadly decisions.
Yes, democracy is on the ropes in too many places around the world, including here at home.
Ted Littleford
Yes, millions of Americans believe that a vast international conspiracy of pedophiles including George Soros and Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama is kidnapping and raping young children and taking over American government to spread their evil deeds beyond back rooms in Washington pizzerias that require shooting up to rescue humanity. Yes, people who believe that are deciding who wins some elections.
Yes, the most popular cable TV news personality in America praises the Taliban for not “hating their own masculinity” and for “liking the patriarchy.”
Yes, some people still deny that climate change exists, and they influence decisions about how to address it.
Yes, it turns out trees communicate with each other through underground fungal networks, and have consciousness, as do lots of animals we interact with.
Who knew?
Well, Sam Gejdenson kind of knew.
Gejdenson grew up on a dairy farm in eastern Connecticut; he saw how calves strove to break free. He was born in a displaced persons camp after his family fled the Holocaust; he grew up seeing waves of anti-Semitism and racism lead people to believe and do horrible things. He served 20 years in Congress, at the dawn of the “government-is-the-problem” Reagan era.
So in some sense he knows we’ve been here before.
And he also knows reason and justice and a collective quest for the common good can prevail.
It just takes work. Thomas Jefferson knew that when he expounded on the need for “eternal vigilance” against threats to democracy. That need exists just as much today in the U.S., in Belarus, in China, in Hungary … you name it.
“The world has a lot of crazies. We can’t minimize that,” Gejdenson said. “In some ways, we’re marking progress.”
“We’re going to turn it around.”
In other words, Sam Gejdenson can explain all the craziness in the world today, and leave us feeling some measure of hope.
He did that Wednesday on an episode of WNHH’s “Dateline New Haven.” Click on the above video to watch him explain.
