Dodo-birds, Unite! Before We’re All Fricassee

The following is a speech from Tony Kushner’s play, A Bright Room Called Day.

Shut up. Listen.
There is something calling….
If you still retain a shred of decency
you can hear it – it’s a dim terrible
voice that’s calling — a bass howl, like
a cow in a slaughterhouse, but
far, far off…
It is calling us to action, calling us
to stand against the calamity,
to spare nothing, not our blood,
nor our happiness, nor our lives
in the struggle to stop the dreadful day
that’s burning now
in oil flames on the horizon.

What makes the voice pathetic
is that it doesn’t know
what kind of people it’s reaching.
Us.
No one hears it, except us.
This Age wanted heroes.
It got us instead:
carefully constructed, but
immobile.
Subtle, but
unfit
to take up
the burden of the times.
It happens.
A whole generation of washouts.
History says stand up,
and we totter and collapse,
weeping, moved, but not
Sufficient.

The best of us, lacking.
The most decent, not decent enough.
The kindest, too cruel.
The most loving, too full of hate.
The wisest, too stupid,
The fittest, unfit
to take up
the burden of the times.

The Enemy
has a voice like seven thunders.
What chance did that dim voice ever have?

Kushner’s character, in this instance, is speaking of those Germans who eagerly kissed the kneecaps of the Nazis in 1933. He’s also speaking directly to those who hid their heads beneath their puny Dodo wings, convincing themselves that tomorrow they would learn to fly. This was an era when Europe ran riot with not only barbarians but some of the most brilliant minds of the Twentieth Century. Still they missed the moment to stand up and say, ‘Stop the hate, stop the racism, stop laying blame. Stop allowing the greedy and power-mad to pander to the ignorant and cowardly. Stop voting for those whose catch phrase is: Just Say No. Stop paying them to sit in the Senate or Congress merely to obstruct justice and ignore their responsibility to provide good governance. Stop allowing those with voices as loud as “seven thunders” to deafen us. Listen! We are not a generation of washouts. We are sufficient to the burden of these times. We can learn. We don’t rewrite history, like Michele Bachman and Sarah Palin, to suit our needs and cover our ignorance. We learn from history how to be better human beings.’

By the way, any Jew who votes for Trump because he/she believes that an ill-informed racist is a friend to Israel, Wake Up! In the words of Sarah Silverman, “You’re being ridiculous!”