DC Insights

While Tarina and I were in DC we took in both the Holocaust museum and the natural history museum. Both museums really impacted me as to how cruel we can be to one another- the Holocaust museum is a stirring and visible reminder of how cruel and heinous the crimes committed against the Jews really were and how no one (not the Americans, not the German Evangelical Christians, . . . ) really stood up and did much of anything to resist this movement of terror. In fact, there is good evidence that the evangelicals in Germany simply aligned themselves with the Nazis and watched as these horrific things took place. In the afternoon we took in the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the WW 2 memorial, and the Vietnam War memorial. Later that night over supper I shared with T on how impactful the day had been and how much of what we had experienced anb how the museums and the memorials all symbolize the various responses humanity has had to various crises and how ironic it was that we were out in DC as part of a nonviolent movement (adoption and foster care) to one of the world’s biggest problems and how much of what we saw preserved how humanity often utilizes war or power to solve problems (or create problems)- it didn’t matter if it was the earliest civilizations and the presence of social classes due to agricultural sustenance, the Roman empire and its persecution of Christians, the centuries long oppression that the white people had over African nations, the Civil War and the mistreatment of slaves, the holocaust, the various wars that we fought (that yes may have done some good, but have also taken on quite the human toll). It seemed to simply amaze me and humble me that at times humanity, left to its own intentions, defaults to power and control as means of trying to make progress (or veils it as progress when in fact it is more like self-preservation).