Randi Kreiss

Thoughts from abroad: a brave new world?

Posted

It took 240 years, but it went around and now it’s come around. Britain has declared its independence from the European Union, deciding to go it alone. In the same way that our cheeky American Colonies pushed away from a paternalistic, restrictive mother country in 1776, the British are dropping out of a relationship that pinches at their sovereignty and prerogatives.

I am observing Brexit from “over there,” on a trip from Sweden to Russia to Denmark and Germany. It all looks different from this perspective because the scars of the past are so evident in every city. Europeans need only look around to remember the lessons of history that are so easy to forget in America.

The vote to leave the E.U. sends Britain down a road strewn with problems: trade agreements to be negotiated, worries about the pound and unresolved immigration issues. Also, it is troubling that the decision seems more about isolationism and xenophobia than self-determination.

The British travelers I meet here are reeling over the decision. But most of them are middle class, and like many of us Americans, they seem out of touch with the great anger swirling among our citizens. How could Brexit have been such a shock? I answer with a question: How could we not have predicted the ascendancy of Donald Trump?

Stepping back, Britain’s crisis seems part of a great historical wave that is roiling our shores. We can connect the dots between Boris Johnson, leader of the “Leave” movement, and Donald Trump, our Republican nominee. Anti-immigrant, aggressive and riding a groundswell of resentment, both men are directing their message at the millions of citizens who feel left behind. These millions have no clear path to success or better jobs; all they see, every day, is evidence of the extreme wealth and privilege they can never attain. Their anguish is real, and it is dangerous. And it has precedent here in Europe as the seeds of revolution.

We just spent three days in St. Petersburg, Russia, where lavish, gilded palaces offer silent testimony to the fabulous wealth and isolated privilege of the czars. Only the restored mansions stand now; the royals, who thought they would rule forever, were assassinated or banished during the Bolshevik Revolution. When we visited Catherine’s Palace, I couldn’t help thinking about the new-world palaces that soar into the Manhattan skyline, mega-million-dollar monuments to the fabulously rich. Close by, homeless people sleep in our streets and beg for food.

Most times we are too close to events to have any real perspective. During the worldwide revolutionary years of the 1700s, the war years of the 1900s and the Arab Spring of the 2000s, people living their day-to-day lives couldn’t know how profoundly the ground under their feet was shifting. Maybe something just as big is happening again now. If reasonable leaders fail to address the great economic divide in our countries, unreasonable demagogues will certainly step into the breach.

The long-term effects of Brexit are unknowable — just as, in 1776, no one in the Colonies could have envisioned the changes that independence would bring in succeeding decades. Each of us is tossed by history in unpredictable ways.

In a few days we land in Germany, the primary anchor of the E.U. Coincidentally, I am reading “In the Garden of the Beasts,” a book by Erik Larsen about the years leading up to World War II in Berlin.

The author talks about American Ambassador Thomas Dodd and his family, who ignored an increasingly strident and aggressive Hitler as he gathered power in the 1930s. The Dodds were aware of daily attacks on Jews and Jewish businesses, but they believed Hitler would never be as bad as rumors indicated. Surely he would never actually do what he said he would. Certainly he would moderate once he held power.

How many people in America are uttering the same assurances about Trump? Surely he won’t round up millions of people who have been living peacefully in the U.S. for decades. Of course he won’t actually ban an entire religion.

The lessons of history are here, in the abandoned palaces of Russia and the memorials to the six million in Berlin.

Even with the internet, nothing feels as powerful as actually standing here, on the ground where the last of the Romanovs were slaughtered after 300 years in power. When the Bolsheviks swept across the land, they thought their brand of Soviet Communism would live forever. Nothing ever does.

As we turned toward the Fourth of July, which we spent in Germany, our American freedoms seemed more precious than ever. We need to pay attention to Trump’s drumbeat of racism and jingoism. The past isn’t just prologue; it is our wisest teacher.

Copyright © 2016 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.