Guantanamo

Why Art for Democracy?

In early 2004 I was extremely uneasy with the political situation in the United States. The Bush Administration's policies were hard to reconcile with the ideas I held about America's role in the world. I was worried, I was depressed, but mostly I was just plain mad. I'd been writing letters to Congess and sending donations to all sorts of progessive organizations, but this just didn't feel like enough. I wanted to do more. Then one day my wife and I were sitting in our office and she got an e-mail from her sister. The e-mail was about her sister's friend, an elderly woman also extremely unhappy about Bush's policies. This woman named Sally apparently walked around town, and though hardly crazy, she was constantly muttering "Screw Bush" and other epithets to those of her community willing to listen. One thing Sally had to say really struck me though. It was "Is this how Hitler started?". While this statement seems hyperbolic, I couldn't help but reflect on some of the historical parallels.

Is This How Hitler Started?

Art for Democracy

I sat down and created this piece of art shortly after hearing Sally's epithet. I guess it really hit hard because a Persian friend of mine, someone who had lived under the Shah and the Islamic Revolutionary government, had said to me earlier that year," I always wondered how the Germans let it happen. Now I know. It was little by little."
Comparisons between Hitler and the current administration are extreme but they make a point and they shock. My aim was to make people consider how the Reichstag fire and the destruction off the World Trade Center had both been followed by a curtailment of civil liberties, the persecution of ethnic minorities and opposition political parties, the creation of camps to house those the governmment found dangerous, and the beginning of invasions of other countries based on trumped up claims and jingoistic reasoning.