Dutch Treat

Kudos to the voters in the Netherlands for learning from our mistake.

Digging in their wooden heels, they pulled back on the shift toward right wing populism and chose, for the time being, to find a more palatable way to preserve their national character without falling into the abyss. Who woulda thunk it? The Dutch?

Not so surprising. I have never been to the Netherlands, unless you count a layover in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport (which I had dubbed, at the time, the "Shithole" Airport for reasons that had nothing to do with a lack of comfort or amenities). I remember signs filled with vaguely familiar words made slightly exotic with oddly placed double-letters and and occasional guttural "cht." I remember how genuinely pleasant the people seemed, as a rule, and I remember shops filled with every kind of cheese imaginable, and then some.

It was nothing more than a "flyover" country to me, back then. Quaint, quiet, with storybook houses and ancient windmills and shoes with no give.  Easy to forget it's the birthplace of Van Gogh, and  the hiding place for Anne Frank. Extraordinary art, an extraordinary girl, extraordinary ordinary Dutch citizens risking their own lives to hide a small cache of doomed Jews. And, now, a surprising hero in the pull back from xenophobia and other garden variety hatreds sweeping though the West.

Maybe there is a silver lining to all this madness. Not the one a stranger pointed out, the other day, when he told me I should stop whining about 45. Yes, he's a despicable person, but our 401(k)'s are thriving. Maybe so, but at what price?

Yes, he's a despicable person, the stranger went on, but I'm not being persecuted, so why do I care? And no matter how many racists have corner offices in the West Wing, local police has all that nonsense under control. The spike in burning crosses may be, at least in part, the federal government's fault, but it's not the federal government's problem. And, I suppose, until a relative's grave gets vandalized or someone I know gets thrown over the wall or my daughters no longer make the rules for their own bodies, it's not my problem either. Give him a chance, he said, bewildered that I had yet to grasp how it is in my best interest to do so.

I have no choice but to "give him a chance." At least in the sense that I don't have the power to physically remove him from the Oval Office and stuff him back under a rock. Not my problem? Maybe. But if I get complacent, I am complicit. It may not be my problem. but it becomes my fault.

The silver lining, I think, is the awakening of sleeping giants and sleeping not-so-giant folks. The Netherlands, at least, got the wake up call. I'm going Dutch.