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Election Reflections from Berlin
How it feels to look at the USA from afar
Note to the reader: I’ve lived in Berlin since 2016. Shortly before the 2016 presidential election, I wrote the following piece to share on my personal social media account and an old blog. It expressed fears I had for the future of the US, informed not just by my own sense of right and decency, but also by my more-than-passing familiarity with German history. In the intervening 4 years, my fears have sadly not diminished; they have compounded. So I will share it here, lightly edited, for a larger audience before the 2020 election.
Voted today at the Embassy. I filled out my ballot at a tiny table at a Deutsche Post office on Behrenstraße, but the Embassy is where I submitted it. Our embassy is in a very prime location in Berlin: it sits to one side of the Brandenburg Gate, arguably Germany’s quintessential landmark. On the other side of the building is this entrance. The one with a Statue of Liberty-inspired Berlin bear and a gigantic star. And this entrance is next to a different landmark; just across the street from it, there stand the 2,711 columns of Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe *(see end note). The Holocaust targeted many different groups, and Berlin has memorials to various of them. A sad patrimony.
