Fritz Stern, author of Five Germanys I Have Known and witness to the collapse of the Weimar Republic, perfectly captures my disgust at the outcome of the elections this week in a letter to the New York Times:
To the Editor:
It is convenient, perhaps even correct, and certainly exculpatory for Democrats to blame President Obama for the disastrous midterm election results. But the stupefying ignorance that seems to prevail among Tea Party candidates and voters is surely not the president’s fault.
It suggests a failure of civic education, a disturbing inadequacy in teaching the basic facts of America’s history and political development. The Tea Partiers’ simplistic appeals to an imaginary past that has no relevance to the present reverberate in the resulting vacuum.
We now face not only gridlock in the next two years but also a basic question about the governability of our country. And the nation’s responsibility is great. Our friends abroad watch all this in dismay and disbelief, while our opponents rejoice at our disarray.
Fritz Stern
New York, Nov. 4, 2010The writer, a historian, is university professor emeritus at Columbia University.
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It’s pretty grim all right. Except in Hawaii, where the Dems are in complete control.
Californians went blue, too, but their problems are such that a Facebook friend said that well, now they will probably refrain from committing mass suicide.