Letter to the editor: Can I feel freedom as my country becomes fascist?

Surreal. The sky is still blue. Even the moon is still there on a cloudy Northwest night. Odd, but this is the same feeling I had when I was thinking of leaving a bad marriage. It took leaving the house and sitting on a bench near a cliff over the Pacific Ocean for me to make a decision. I saw the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, imagined it touching shores unimaginably far away, and I felt freedom.

Can I feel freedom as my country becomes increasingly fascist? Odd, again, as back in my idealistic youth, and after I graduated from Mossyrock High School in 1965, then went on to college to  become a professor, I was an internationalist, not a nationalist. Workers of the world, unite! I still feel that as I write it down. But there is this squiggly feeling, as well, in my gut, that is hard to square with the question of what to do as I watch the horrific cruelty of fascism take hold. 

Masked ICE men snatching hardworking men and women off the street, as the crying children cling to their parents, children who are brutally thrust aside, perhaps put in cages. I have to believe that stopping fascism here will help us one day, to stop it elsewhere by example, by policy. I have to believe that cruelty is a passing fascist tactic, and that deep down we care for all of humanity, the planet, the animals.

I have to believe that our options are vast, like the ocean. That remembering the sky, the moon still being there will make us remember the former sense of hope we had. A hope we'd make the country live up to its ideals of a truly liberal democracy, a place of freedom that pledges allegiance to all of its citizens and aspiring citizens. 

Because why would we expect the citizens and someday citizens to pledge allegiance, if the nation does not pledge allegiance to them?

Linda Warren

Winlock