Time Out

Why My Great-Grandson Deserves a Better Version of America -- As Does Yours

The other day, as I was traveling by train with my wife to meet one of the most precious people in our lives—our 5-day-old great-grandson—I was jolted out of a beautiful reverie. I’d been thinking about how blessed we were that the young lad and his mother were doing well, and, might I say, about what a handsome young dude he is and already so alert in the photos and videos we’d seen, eager to embrace the world. Suddenly, I felt a deep concern overtake me, like a menacing storm cloud chilling and darkening my soul. Looking out at the lush green landscape rolling by, I was gripped by a sense of grief about what kind of country my great grandson would be growing up in.

This grand land, my adopted homeland, which was a source of spiritual renewal for me and had embraced me as a 15-year-old immigrant fleeing Romania’s vicious authoritarian regime; which had educated me and enabled me to live the American dream, was being defiled. I felt as though I was being enveloped by the stench of the despoiling of our heritage of striving to become a better country; to become ever-more embracing of all people, of all colors and religions and viewpoints. I had arrived in the mid-1950s, and the most moving and inspiring moments of my early life in the country were watching the marches of the growing Civil Rights movement, with people of all faiths and colors joining forces to demand that Black, Latino, and Native people receive the respect and opportunities they had so long been denied. Now they were being once again denigrated, with the rights so hard fought for under siege.

This country I love, built on the dream scripted in the Declaration of Independence, was being pulled apart. Masked men were roaming the streets, brutalizing and killing people, and shoving them into vehicles, speeding away with them to squalid detention centers. Good books were being ripped off the shelves of libraries and banned from schools. Voting rights protections were being eliminated. It seemed like a beautiful, ornate glass enclosure that had once nurtured our growth toward a more perfect union turned out to be horribly fragile and was crumbling

I had witnessed the unleashing of authoritarian depravity in Romania, where hundreds of thousands of men and women were rounded up and murdered, including my grandfather, simply because they were not part of the regime. They were not in the opposition, not rebels; they were killed only because they were not “them”!

The name of my ancestor, Pavel Bocu, who had been revered as a leader of an 18^th century peasant uprising, disappeared from the schoolbooks, just because my grandfather, a former governor of Transylvania, carried the same name. My 80-year-old grandfather became a target, another of the millions who were not “them” and had to be disposed of. He was arrested by the secret police in the middle of the night and killed in prison, and I’ll ever forget the night he was taken away.

Now similar stories were splashed across our newspapers and TV screens. In our Capitol, distinguished military leaders were being stripped of their rank and upstanding public servants targeted by bogus investigations. Why? Because they were not like “them.” Because the Fuhrer-like leader must not be contradicted or criticized, his dictums, lawful or not, must be unquestioningly obeyed. Because personal rights, state laws, federal laws, and democratic norms no longer matter if the leader says so. Because values once revered —kindness, compassion, honor—no longer rule the day.

I felt the stench from the rot of our democracy suffocating me.

But then I caught myself. Time out Peter, I thought. Don’t succumb to this. Act, Peter. Do what you can. Find a way to fight back. Reflect, and write. Use your experience and brains to suggest solutions. Defend the dream Jefferson set forth in the Declaration of Independence; it cannot be allowed to be disavowed. It must not only be protected but reinforced. So time out, Peter. You lived the American Dream, and you owe it to your newborn great grandson, and to all his peers of all backgrounds, all colors, and all beliefs, to fight back. Time out, Peter. You’ve got work to do.

So I will be working; I will be reflecting, and I will be writing. I will also be cherishing every moment I spend with my new great-grandson, committed to the belief that he will grow up in a country that has shaken off the stench of tyranny and not only returned to the mission of creating a more perfect union, but greatly furthered it.