Bonhoeffer….

It matters

Yesterday I watched the Angel Studios production, Bonhoeffer, and it had a profound effect upon me.

I arrived for a year of study at the University of Vienna in the Fall of 1969.It was less than 25 years after the end of World War II and 15 years after the Austrian State Treaty that ended Four Power Occupation of Vienna and Austria.My lodgings were in the 5^th District, close to the Südbahnhof, the great Southern Railroad Station.

It’s gone now, replaced by a new station. It had been a target of Allied bombing and the buildings in the area bore the scars. The apartment building in which I lived had been hit, with several deaths in the cellar where the people hid from the destruction all around. It was rebuilt after the war, with a plaque proclaiming the event.

There were reminders of the war and the aftermath everywhere. Buildings still bore scars from small arms and tank shells. The prominent monument to the Soviet soldiers who took the city (a statue of a soldier the Viennese termed the “Unknown Plunderer”) was conspicuously located along the Ringstrasse, the broad avenue that marked the earlier city walls that had defended the city against the Turkish siege in 1689.

However, the reminders of the war that struck me the most were the people themselves. My landlady had been a member of the Kriegsmarine that had occupied the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy. She was at once sweet but tough…and she was still a Nazi under the surface.

I met some wonderful Austrians, kind and generous. Most were people just like you and me. I had been expecting some inner streak of totalitarianism, but aside from those very few, I didn’t see it. Perhaps that is what now I find chilling. I came to the realization then, that given the right set of circumstances, what happened in Germany and Austria in the 1930’s and 1940’s could happen anywhere…even the United States…and it did…it is all around us even as I write this. Maybe in a somewhat different form. I’m not calling them “Nazis”. That is what they call Donald Trump and people like me. No, they are not Nazis, but the ideology that has taken hold off their souls is no less chilling, no less formidable.

Perhaps I am more tuned into these things. Two of my mother’s first cousins were murdered by Croatian Fascists in the Jasenovac Death Camp. Most likely they met their end at the hands of a member of a religious order, as they were the most fanatic of the assassins who wanted to purge the country of those who worshipped a different brand of Christianity.

The movie charts the course of the German and Austrian Churches in the descent into madness of a once-great society, a society that gave so much to the sciences and the arts. They found themselves at an inflection point, where their actions literally changed the course of history. Eric Metaxas tells the story in a number of his books on the subject including the book upon which the movie was based and a warning to our own time.

Metaxas recounts that of the 18,000 Protestant pastors in Germany and Austria during Hitler’s rise, 3,000 were enthusiastic supporters of Hitler, 3,000 openly resisted Nazi’s ideology, but 12,000 just acted like nothing was happening. Those 12,000 could have stopped the madness, but at the inflection point they sat on their hands.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.
God will not hold us guiltless.”

Our own inflection point came in 2020, with our response to COVID. That was the right set of circumstances that changed our world.

It certainly changed medicine. It also produced three classes of healthcare professionals: those who questioned the wisdom of “nontreatment” and only social distancing till the “vaccine” becomes available, those who enthusiastically supported the dictates of Tony Fauci even if they were illogical and changing, and the vast majority who just didn’t want to take a stand.

Of course it wasn’t just healthcare professionals, as all off society fell into those same camps. News reports illustrated countless instances of force being used to arrest those breaking protocols of lockdown. Never mind that the laws were completely illogical: churches closed but liquor stores open, wearing masks walking to your table, but then taking them off to eat, tackling a woman who was not wearing a mask, veritable concentration camp in Australia. The list is virtually endless as anything that one could dream of being unreasonable was done.

As if this were not enough, it coincided with other affronts to liberty: the Black Lives Matter protests and DEI imposition and the exponential increase in antisemitism.

COVID, DEI and antisemitism seems to have divided our society into two distinct groups that, at least to my view, correspond to the two major political parties in the United States. Joe Biden and his administration were fervently pro-mRNA “vax”, pro DEI (including the substitution of “gender preference” for sex) and anti-Israel. Donald Trump’s vision resonated with those who saw our COVID policy as a tool of Big Pharma, DEI as dangerous and were tired of blaming the Jews for every evil. That may be simplistic, but that is how I see it.

Luckily, I escaped the worst of the hatred. I was retired and could not be harmed financially for my beliefs. However, I did not escape entirely. Like Bonhoeffer, some of this was linked to spirituality. Having been asked to assist Truth for Health in its mission of bringing hope to those paralyzed by the fear of what was (purposefully?) billed as a new Black Death, I approached the congregation in which my wife and I had been members for over 30 years. Can you remember the fear that was rampant in the Spring of 2020? We offered concrete means of dealing with this on both the physical and spiritual levels. I was completely rebuffed on multiple occasions. One leader in the congregation, a fellow physician, asked that I never talk to him about COVID again.

I was approached to assist a national Christian medical organization with some of their Prolife outreach. When I mentioned that my Prolife stance was not limited to abortion but also included treatment of COVID as well as the dangers of the mRNA agent to the young who had no risk from the disease and could still pass on COVID even if they received it, I was politely asked to withdraw.

When I applied to take a course with an international organization to which I had over a decade of connection, I was forced to submit a declaration of how I had advanced the goals of DEI and how participation in that course would aid the furtherance of DEI in society, I at first balked. I did submit something that spoke to my presentations and publications on “The Hispanic Paradox” in health. My studies showed how predominantly Hispanic Counties in Arizona had better health outcomes than expected because of their social support networks. I pointed to this being something that should be learned by all people. That was not enough. They were looking for something that showed the negative influence of “White Supremacy”. I was rejected for the course.

Of course it didn’t start with Biden. For all the democrat fantasies about Trump being a dictatorial divider, the truth seems to suggest otherwise. Although touted as an expert on Constitutional Law, in 2001 Obama lamented that it was a “charter of negative liberties” that constrained the power of the government. Strange, but I thought that was the purpose…a GOOD purpose.

In 2008, Obama criticized republicans as “bitter clingers”. In the same year, he boasted of bringing a gun to a knife fight. Of course this was metaphorical. Nobody suggested he was literal. However, as we see that will change in 2025. Even the media was largely silent realizing it was metaphorical. However when Sarah Palin used a “target” identify Congressional districts to focus on in the midterms, that same media were apoplectic that she was encouraging violence.

The Left’s fascination with dismissing those who did not share their views continued with Hillary Clinton’s famous description of “half” of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables”.

The inflammatory rhetoric continued after Trump’s election in 2016. In 2018, Maxine Waters urged people to “get in the face” of Trump officials and supporters.

Although campaigning as a uniter of a fractured nation, Joe Biden was anything but. He constantly railed against the “MAGA republicans” with the same furor as “Der Fuehrer” railed against the Jews as the root of all evil in Germany. His famous, “Dark Brandon” speech, delivered in Philadelphia in September 2022 with a dark red background and Biden flanked by two Marines should have sent warning bells clanging in everybody’s consciousness. I half expected it to end with a torchlight parade complete with massed drums.

Fortunately, at our own inflection point on November 5, 2024, the American public chose overwhelmingly to reject the hate and tyranny. I thought the worse was over. Now I am not sure.

As soon as Donald Trump began to do exactly what he said he would do, the Left exploded. To gain in the courts what they could not gain at the voting booth, a flurry of legal challenges was forthcoming with sympathetic judges issuing injunction after injunction. One was from someone with whom I served in student government during my undergraduate days. Fortunately, he reversed his opinion.

Maxine Waters again was “in the face” of someone, this time an unflappable security guard at the Department of Education. Democrat members of Congress congregated to gleefully though F-bombs at Donald Trump. Does anybody remember the hapless rodeo clown who was banned for life for wearing a mask of Obama?

Remember how Biden’s cabinet was treated by the republicans during their nomination hearings? Here’s a hint—it was a world of difference with how the democrats treated the current slate. ALL of Biden’s nominees were passed with at least one republican vote. Republicans acknowledged that elections have consequences. Democrats not so much.

It is frankly ludicrous to hear politicians pontificate on their concerns regarding FBI director Kash Patel when multiple people in leadership position in the past were found to be woefully partisan. There was evidence Andrew McCabe lied on multiple occasions, including under oath. He is now a visiting professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Kevin Clinesmith admitted to falsifying emails to “get” Donald Trump. He was found guilty. His “punishment”? A one-year supervised suspension of his law license. The antics of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page played out to public. They were not punished but rewarded with a settlement from the Department of Justice.

Tell me again there is no such thing as the Deep State….

Very troubling were the comments by democrat representatives Robert Garcia on the need to bring actual weapons to the fight against Elon Musk and Donald Trump and Kweisi Mfume who called for a “constitutional fight, a legal fight and on days like this a street fight” against Musk and Trump. Contrast that with Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, for “peaceful and patriotic protest”. Even a clearly hostile media can in no place point to actual physical violence, such as these democrat representatives did. Will they face any repercussion? I bet no….

Perhaps the most personally disappointing was the reaction of some of my “friends” on social media when I dared to disagree with their group condemnation of all things Trump. Finally, I had enough of just sitting back and remaining silent while they trashed MY views. I shook off the Pluralistic Ignorance and said I didn’t agree with them. The response was swift and sure.

I suddenly had a glimpse of what my mother’s first cousins may have felt when they were denounced by their neighbors. Just a glimpse of what so many countless people felt in the Fascist states of Europe almost a century ago. Sadly, I could see where some of these people with whom I had shared so much over the years may have no compunction about turning me in as well.

We may have gotten a reprieve with the last election, but as urged by the final clips in Bonhoeffer we can’t forget.

Never Again!