7.9.2026 – we are all to blame …

we are all to blame …
sometimes is wiser not to
look over the hill

Been thinking a lot of the next 10 years.

The years when that current man in office is no longer in office and those folks who supported that current man in office will have to explain their support for that current man in office.

Let me be clear, I am confident that the current state of affairs of this ship of state will not last, cannot be sustained and in the words of Longfellow will:

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee, – are all with thee!

But of those who support this current man in office?

Those who support this administration that wraps itself in the Bible without bothering to read the words that say so simply:

… the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law (Galatians 5:22-23 KJV).

Love.

Joy.

Peace.

Longsuffering.

Gentleness.

Goodness.

Faith.

Meekness.

Temperance.

Against such there is no law!

I mean, come on, what does anyone have to tell themself to bend the meaning of these simple words so that they can be applied to that man currently in office?

Last night I was reading On my own : the years since the White House by Eleanor Roosevelt (Harper: New York, 1958), and Mrs. Roosevelt wrote about visiting Germany when she had been appointed as a member of the US Delegation to the United Nations meetings in 1946.

She wrote:

I remembered my friend, Carola von Schaeffer-Bernstein, born Passavant, as a very lovely blonde girl when we were at school together at Allenswood. She had a soft pink and white complexion, and she had been a very earnest kind of person. In the First World War, her husband was a general on the Eastern or Russian front and I remembered that following that war she had written me a rather sad letter in which she expressed sorrow about the war but said that “we are all to blame” because we have not lived by the teachings of Christ.

Now, in American headquarters at Frankfurt, I expected to find a greatly changed person but, in fact, she was no more changed by the passage of years and the long years of war than I, perhaps less. She was still lovely, and it was only when you looked the second time that you noticed that she was tired and worn by the strain of life in an occupied country. She was dressed plainly but well and her attitude toward me, while a bit reserved, was much as it had always been. I suppose, too, that our conversation was not much different than it had been when we met in earlier days. They were living in straitened circumstances but they were not destitute. If I had originally felt that she might be in difficulties and that I might in some way help her, it became obvious that she was not.

We said nothing — I suppose we avoided saying anything — in particular about the war until she was almost ready to leave, when I made some remark about the tragedy of Germany. She answered promptly.

“It was everybody’s fault.” Then, echoing what she had written me a quarter of a century earlier. “We are all to blame. None of us has lived up to the teachings of Christ.”

I thought to myself that this was perhaps an easy way of not facing the problem, particularly for a German woman with education and social standing. But in my reply I pursued another thought.

“You have always been a very religious person,” I said. “How is it possible that one can be so devoted to the principles of the church yet not protest the mistreatment of the Jews?”

“Sometimes,” she replied, “it is wiser not to look over the hill.”

Soon afterward she left to return home. I never did ask her whether she or her family had been Nazis, but then, after the war practically no one had ever been a Nazi!

I think about the next 10 years.

I think about those responsible, those to blame.

We are all to blame when you get right down to it.

Sometimes, it is wiser not to look over the hill.