^{CHARLEY BRADY}

The idea behind these little snippets was simply to throw out small nuggets of silent-era-related tidbits that I come across every week. It was meant to be lighthearted and informative first and foremost. I didn’t foresee this post, that’s for sure.

And when Adam Scheffler screened The City Without Jews on September 16^th last (to draw attention to the fact that it was the 88^th anniversary of the Nuremberg Race Laws) he could never have suspected that such a ferocious attack on Israel was probably even then in the planning.

I wrote at the time that I thought Adam’s decision was inspired – ‘especially now that anti-Jewish sentiment is once more on the rise’. And it has been no pleasure to me to watch this week as certain people have tied themselves in knots trying to somehow justify what can have no justification.

As I write this morning there are six major conflicts going on around the globe, with around another two dozen ‘minor’ ones – though I doubt that they seemed minor to the dead. It looks as if we can add one more to that grim list.

We always hear that ‘we are better than this’. You know, I don’t really think that we are. In a long and diverse working life of 45-plus years, I’ve found myself on two occasions in war zones. And that was two too many. There’s nothing romantic about them, nothing that resembles John Wayne going into the fray with a quip and an inspiring speech.

No, I don’t think that we amount to much at all. But I think that we CAN do. I think that we CAN be better than this. And whatever your political leanings, you know – I hope – that the savagery we are seeing this week is the wrong way to be, the wrong way to live.

We CAN be better than this.

^{charleybrady@gmail.com}