The New York Times (Gift)

01/15/2026

“How could people do such things?” I often asked, around age 9 or 10.

That’s Germans, I was told by my parents and teachers. They were evil. It was in their blood. The only good German is a dead German, they would say.

Most of my grandparents’ families were murdered in the Holocaust. And so in my upbringing, there were no “ordinary” Germans, to borrow a phrase from the Holocaust historian Christopher Browning. They were all hateful, fascist murderers — fools who could be led by a fearmonger to commit atrocities he claimed were necessary and good. How the Germans came to be this way, no one could say. One thing was certain, though: We, thank goodness, were not like them.

We were Americans.

We weren’t so easily fooled.

We were different.

I recalled that certainty in recent days, reading about the killing of Renee Good. I read about how the Trump administration quickly labeled her a terrorist. About how federal officials blocked the investigation by Minnesota. About how our leaders accused her of trying to ram an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent when the videos of the incident seemed to clearly show otherwise. “Who are you going to believe,” asked Chico Marx, “me or your own eyes?” I suppose, in the eyes of this administration, that makes me a Marxist now.

None of this surprised me. After all, the shooting was just one day after the administration published a propaganda website saying the Jan. 6 insurrection was the fault of the Democrats and the Capitol Police.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, proudly so, and don’t trust any state, religious or corporate entity. So I knew that a lie told enough becomes the truth, that terror is a government’s method of control, that fear is its greatest motivator.

But that’s the Trump administration, I reassured myself, not the American people.

Americans aren’t so easily fooled.

Americans are different.

Alas, my comfort was short-lived, as I made the mistake, then, of sinking into social media. There I encountered ordinary Americans who believed the Trump administration without question. Ordinary Americans who blamed Ms. Good, who repeated the things they learned from the government, like that she was a paid agitator, a far-left radical who got what she deserved. Ordinary Americans who said the armed agent who killed an apparently unarmed woman was a hero, defending his nation from undesirables. Ordinary Americans who, soon enough, lay the blame for the whole thing on Democrats, antifa, Gov. Tim Walz, Jews, women and gays.

Past or present, it’s not the leaders who disappoint me. It’s the led.

Which brings me back to that flea market find, to that old diary I didn’t buy. I was a young, broke writer at the time. I opted to spend what money I had on the old typewriter.

But I miss those days.

I miss the comfort of believing Germans were different.

I miss believing that we Americans could never be led by a fearmonger to commit atrocities he claimed were necessary and good.

I miss believing we are not like them.