Feb 5, 2017

Grain by grain

It’s like grains of sand, she said. You don’t notice the first one. Hardly the second and third. Then you start feeling them. But gradually you are getting used to the change.

Hédi Fried is 94 years old. Born in Rumania she survived both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen as a little girl and arrived on The White Buses in Sweden in 1945. Her first memory from here is the hot chocolate she was offered by the nurses welcoming her. 

Hédi Fried became a psychologist and author and has spent her life telling her story. Again and again. In books and lectures, most often in schools and among children and young people. The mission of corse is clear.

I am listening to her Friday night on the Scandinavian talk show Skavlan. Fredrik Skavlan is asking her how it happens. When it happens, how can it happen? And she responds:

It’s like grains of sand. You don’t notice the first one. Hardly the second and third. Then you start feeling them. But gradually you are getting used to the change. It’s happening.

Sverigedemokraterna (The Sweden Democrats) a nationalistic, social conservative, rasist and xenophobic party was voted into the Swedish parliament in 2010 by 5,7 %. Sweden was in chock. Up until then our governing had been clean from brown boots and the fear that rules these opinions. And all the other political parties swore they would never even talk to them, even less give them any kind of power.

In the 2014 election Sverigedemokraterna had 12,9 % of the Swedish vote. Now the third largest party in the parliament. It’s hard to tell when the shock was more massiv, in 2010 or 2014.

Gradually most of the other parties have incorporated opinions which originally you did only find within Sverigedemokraterna. You can even recognize the rhetoric. Grain by grain. And by the massive stream of refugees during 2015 our fundamental Swedish values of solidarity went out the window and we closed our borders.

http://homeisawayawayishome.blogspot.se/2015/09/have-you-forgotten-your-history-how-is.html
http://homeisawayawayishome.blogspot.se/2015/10/the-end-of-one-journey-and-beginning-of.html
http://homeisawayawayishome.blogspot.se/2015/12/sweden-becoming-fortress.html

The next election will be in 2018. And a couple of weeks ago the Swedish right wing party Moderaterna started talks with Sverigedemokraterna. Grain by grain.

Since January 4th 2016 all travelers crossing the border between Denmark and Sweden  must show an ID card. I don't have the most recent numbers, but in 2014 95800 persons were commuting between the two countries every day. Their commute is now, due to the ID check, 30-40 minutes longer, making at least an extra hour a day.

The other day I was watching a news clip on the subject. For a year now people have had to go through this process every day to get to their job and back home. Quiet and patiently waiting in line. Most of them of course looking very Scandinavian born and bred. And this will continue. People have adapted. Grain by grain.

A week ago I was stating Donald Trump’s hyper active manic behavior might cause so much disturbance in society that even people different to Seattle mayor Ed Murray and Washington governor Jay Inslee could realize the country might collapse. Well, the republican U.S. District Judge James Robart, appointed by President George W. Bush, Friday ordered a national halt to enforcement of President Trump’s controversial travel ban, arguing it as “unlawful and unconstitutional. This also happened in Seattle. I am a very proud in heart Seattleite.

I am thinking about the grain by grain theory though, watching Donald Trump. His behavior sure isn’t grain by grain. It’s an earthquake no one can escape. It’s a volcano erupting. Yet, listening to CNN’s chief political analyst Gloria Borger at the end of the week I am wondering.

Was it last Saturday when he was on phone with eight world leaders on the same day, I think so. Hearing this I was stunned. Thinking there was clearly no time for contemplation between those calls. No time for taking in. No time for processing. No time for other than shooting from the hip. So it wasn’t surprising hearing Gloria Borger reporting how Donald Trump had been so rude and aggressive during those calls some of the experienced White House staff had gone white faced.

But what worried me the most was Gloria Borger discussing in terms of the nation and the world getting used to this. His behavior. His actions. Getting used to the change. Getting numb.

Can an earthquake be one grain of sand? A volcano erupting the second? A tsunami a third? Is what’s going on right now the little grains of sand? Then what will The Big One be?

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