On Monday, October 28, all of Greece—plus Greeks and Hellenes worldwide—celebrated Oxi Day. That date celebrates the occasion in 1940 when emissaries sent by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini knocked on the door of the Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas at 3:00 a.m. They told him he should open his sleepy eyes and surrender Greece to the Italian army hunkered down in Albania, primed to attack Greece.
Metaxas replied, "Oxi" (Ochi). Oxi means "no" in Greek. Thus begat the Greek resistance to the fascist Axis powers that would last the next 219 days, until elite German forces overran Greece in 1941, remaining throughout the country until the end of the war. Over those four years of German occupation, nearly 400,000 Greek civilians and military would die, a sum of about 10% of the population of Greece.
Among them was my dad's uncle, Nick. He came to the United States with my grandfather, but returned to Greece prior to the start of World War II. My dad told me his uncle died of starvation—a very common pathway to the heavens at the time, since it was also common that German soldiers would not only empty foodstuffs of the local citizens but also disable them from being capable of growing new crops to replenish the old. Nazis were not nice people.
While that was taking place on the mainland of Greece, my mother's family was also suffering from food and staple shortages on the island of Crete, likewise begat of German occupation. When my mother met them for the first time nearly 60 years after the war ended, they showered her (and us) with huge meals to give thanks for her father sending them Red Cross relief during the war from his earnings in the coal and copper mines of Utah. Without it, they said, they may not have survived.
Can you imagine that? Going nearly four years without a steady supply of the bare necessities or food? What Americans living today have even missed four meals in a row, let alone four years of them? It's no small wonder then that fascism is not looked upon as kindly in Greece as it is here in the United States.
But as affinity for fascism is growing here in the Trump party (the former Republican Party), with all the definitive hallmarks of anti-semitism, racism, hatred of immigrants and minorities, populist conspiracy theories and dire economic warnings, it cannot be forgotten that fascism didn't fully die in Greece. The fascist political party Golden Dawn had a brief but prominent spell during the Greek financial crisis of the previous decade.
Indeed, a study of the hateful, demeaning dialogue taking place in Greece (and also in other European countries with marginalized citizens) from that era is a pretty fair template for the dialogues taking place at Trump rallies today. One could almost exchange the dialogue of Trump's Madison Square Garden hate-fest with that of a run-of-the-mill Golden Dawn rally in Athens in 2012: short on solutions; long on suspicion.
I told myself today that I wouldn't spend much time on the topic of Donald Trump. Whatever I could say has been written 10,000 times already, and it is barely noon. So I won't. Kamala Harris is going to win the general election next Tuesday anyway, and nothing I can say today is going to change that outcome. Which does remind me—why are so many people bothered that newspapers are loathe to make endorsements these days?
As best as I can recall, this newspaper has made only two political endorsements ever: one for Sheriff Aaron Kennard, a Republican running against the Democrat N.D. "Pete" Hayward in the early 1990s; and later endorsing Rocky Anderson against a herd of Democrats heading into the Democratic primary for the year 2000. Pretty sure that's it. If not I'll chalk it up to lost gray matter.
Anyway, who doesn't know which way we would lean in nearly every race anyway? My vote has been cast and mailed. As in nearly every state and national election I've participated in since 1972, it's not going to affect the outcome one bit. But I didn't vote for the rapist nor his smitten enabler, Spencer Cox.
This week, it was reported that USA Today, like The Washington Post, would not make an endorsement for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. USA Today endorsed Trump in 2016, then "dis-endorsed" him, but would not take the next step and move its endorsement to Hillary Clinton. USA Today said she had too much ethical baggage.
And now it cannot move to Kamala? What ethical baggage might she own that comes within an eyelash of what Trump possesses?
Then there's The Washington Post, which apparently lost 200,000 subscribers when owner Jeff Bezos killed an endorsement for Kamala Harris that was set to run. That will cost him about $10 million in revenues at a company that already lost $100 million last year.
Bezos is worth $220 billion. It's not going to hurt. The problem is less that Bezos owns a newspaper and more that he also owns businesses that contract with the government. This is a conflict that should be readily recognized in these parts: Can you imagine the Deseret News writing an editorial that conflicts with its ownership?
Would The Salt Lake Tribune ever do that? Gee, dunno (actually I do), but isn't it in fairly fresh memory that the heavy hand of ownership there created at least a smidgen of newsroom tension in the last gubernatorial race? Bros will be bros, you know.
Let the reporters report freely and there's no need for endorsements. Still, vote blue—at least mostly!
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