I am trying to imagine a world without hate. That is what good people do every morning around the globe.
Unfortunately, once hate takes root, it is difficult to snuff it out. We have centuries of examples and some very recent ones to prove that sad truth. Doing that work — God’s work — takes leadership. The kind that condemns hate and those who hate at every turn, not condones it or encourages it at the end of a tweet.
The Anti-Defamation League is a century-old institution that was founded to combat the scourge of anti-Semitism, and today it combats hate of all kinds because when it exists, no one person and no one group is safe from its malevolent consequences.
This past Thursday evening hundreds of Las Vegans gathered to honor two outstanding community leaders for their longstanding and continuing service to our city and state not only in pursuing ADL’s mission but in driving this entire community toward a more hopeful future.
Don Ross and our dear Punam Mathur are very different people and, yet, what they do for this entire state is very much the same. They get up every morning and work to exemplify the American values of giving to those who deserve, standing up for those who need and fighting for the cause of justice and equality. They set the bar high, but just low enough for people of goodwill to surmount it if they try.
The ADL works the same way but, sadly, its work is confined to places and the kind of people who are darkened with the ignorance of hate. The work of the ADL takes a special kind of diligence and a whole lot of resources to succeed every day. It is a classic battle of good versus evil and a simple lesson in how to do what’s right even when others don’t agree.
Las Vegas is most fortunate to have Jolie Brislin leading ADL’s efforts in our community. She is tireless in her commitment to doing whatever can be done to defeat those who choose to harm rather than help their neighbors. She works with the police, the schools, the neighborhoods and the families who are victimized by white-nationalists, neo-Nazis, anti-immigrant haters and those who need to oppress others to make it through their own days.
In short, just like every institution designed to do good and do right, it takes leadership, passion and commitment. Jolie has all that in abundance.
But, what we heard this past week is she also has something else — something neither she nor any other parent deserves who is tying to raise her kids to be good and loving and decent members of our American society.
We have heard a lot about a “new normal” in America. With new and different leadership in our nation’s capital the past three years, we have been forced to try to accept that all we have been taught growing up in this country needs to change.
Levels of decency must sink to new lows, ways of doing business with friendly nations must give way to an attitude that enemies rule and allies are ruled out, and honor and integrity are just two more words that might be consigned to the waste bin of a history once known for its clear lines of right and wrong.
Whether our country continues on this self-destructive course is what the next election and the election after that is all about. We will soon know, as a “nation under God,” what the “new normal” for America will be.
That’s the larger picture. What concerns me more right now is the “new normal” in Jolie’s house because I am certain it exists in homes and neighborhoods throughout our community.
She told us Thursday night, in part:
“I was watching ‘60 Minutes’ with my son … They were discussing the one year commemoration of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack where 11 people were murdered by a white supremacist. My son is 8. … As the program ended, I turned to look at him. He was looking over the top of his iPad and at the TV. He surprised me. He was crying. I pulled him closer and asked what was wrong. He looked at me, hesitated, and said, ‘I’m scared to be Jewish.’
“Exactly what I spend my life fighting, that fear was reaching into my home and touching my son as I sat next to him.
“Then, the important thing happened — what I want to talk to you about tonight happened. I wiped his tears, hugged him, he stood up, he said, ‘Do you want to play Madden 19 on Xbox with me?’
“What I was witnessing was a young child adapting to this fear. It’s what kids do. He seemed to do it within moments of telling me about his fear. They’re resilient — sort of. He ran around like normal, but carrying inside a new level of acceptable fear, his new normal.
“The same way that my son is adapting, the adults are adapting and the nation is following. We’re all becoming infected with more and more feelings of acceptable fear.
“How many times does he get exposed to this until it changes him? Until it changes all of us?
“The virus of hate is spreading. More than that, I believe this virus is mutating into a new strain of hate that is resistant to previous solutions. It is internet borne, and it is feeding off of social media and mass communication. It’s causing a soul-numbing, overwhelming flow of hateful information. It’s both causing and benefiting from our fragmenting culture. It’s recruiting, harassing, marketing, networking and rallying … all done 24/7 online.”
Jolie’s job at ADL is to do all she can to protect all of us from the evil of this hate that is delivered at warp-speed throughout our daily lives. It is, to be sure, a pursuit that is critical to a free society.
But her job as a mother should never have to be to console her child, fear for that little boy, and accept the fact that his new normal contains a level of fear that has no place in American society.
ADL will continue to do its job to help maintain the decency of America. As parents we also have a job to do. And that is to make sure that there will never be a normal — new or old — that requires an American child to live with that kind of fear.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.