The Reappearance of the Swastika

In yesterday's Washington Post the big headline on Page One was "Trump nominees map out plans for tax revamp, trade." Because it's an election year, see, and the new guy is coming in and there will be parades and balls and transitional stuff. It happens every time we get a new President, cabinet members, policies. Nothing to see here.

Back in the Metro section on page B-6, after the PG County Councilman who crashed his car drunk, after Alexandria Confederate symbols to stay for now, after rail-car reliability is a priority, after the obit for the guy who invented the Big Mac, was a story from Montgomery County: Swastika found in high school restroom.

The incident is the second at Quince Orchard since October, when a caustic substance was used on the football field to create the image of a swastika, according to Montgomery County police. An investigation is still underway, police said.

My own reaction was a little surprising to me. The question came into my mind -- why is this in the newspaper?

Of course the swastika was a despised symbol when I was young, after World War II. My father was one of the lucky ones, he was brought back from the brink of death after he was shot down fighting Nazis; he was later able to walk with a cane. We had to help him put his socks on as kids, that was something we learned when we were big enough. Lots of dads had scars. We didn't like Nazis and swastikas back then. We still sang "Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk..." years after the war. But, you know, things change, now people walk around with telephones in their pocket, TV is in color and some of the new screens almost look real, I haven't seen a typewriter in ages.

My father's generation is just about gone, and a new one has taken over. Of course swastikas used to be a bad thing. But nowadays Nazis, the KKK, swastikas, untruths, racial and religious prejudice and violence are as American as pussy-grabbing.

So a kid scrawled a swastika in the bathroom, he was just expressing his patriotism. He supports our newly-elected President. Why is it in the paper, again?

I wonder how long the newspapers will bother to carry this kind of story at all. The Post quotes some old-fashioned grown-ups sputtering about "hate-based acts" and "will not be tolerated." Then the paper does a smart thing and saves space by listing off a lot of incidents in one article, so they don't have to keep running dog-bites-man over and over again, month after month. October thirtieth, November tenth, November eleventh, November fourteenth... "Our schools must continue to be safe places for students to learn," some lib said. Someone else was quoted in the lamestream Post saying, "They’ve lost their shame."

It'll be in a Saturday Night Live skit next, and then on South Park, or maybe South Park will have swastika-scrawlers first. Comedians will joke about swastika graffiti, at first in self-righteous tones but pretty soon they will be joke-admitting that they also sometimes scrawl swastikas and the crowd will laugh sympathetically, remembering the last fence or wall they scrawled swastikas on. Eventually people will forget that the swastika was once considered a negative symbol, or they will forget why, the news stories will have long disappeared, the jokes won't be edgy or funny anymore, and the transition will be complete.