Understanding Where We Are in History

Thanks to my writing, people from my past often find me and reach out. Especially if they come through Israel, which more and more people seem to be doing lately. Recently, someone from my past asked if I thought America was over, and also if I sometimes felt crazy.

The first thing that came to mind was a story I’d been pitching around during COVID. I spent the first few months of the pandemic learning all about past pandemics. I love to dip into the past to help understand what the future might look like — it’s one of my favorite parts of writing stories. Based on what I learned about how pandemics work, combined with how the US government and public were responding to the pandemic, I began pitching a story about why COVID would probably be with us for the next 20-50 years.

One editor replied that I was crazy - this thing was going to be over in a week. Needless to say, I turned out to not be crazy. But also, no one wanted my reported story of doom.

The same holds true today. Thanks to my jobs in the Obama White House and adjacent to the Biden transition team and the Biden Administration, I was privy to a number of facts about the current state of the US that, when taken together, look remarkably like the fall of an empire. To help provide context around these facts, I went deep in my reading about defunct empires. Like pandemics, empires have fallen before. I wondered if I could figure out where we were in history, and what that might tell me about where we were going next.

So, I read Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I read about the Iranian Revolution, the Orange revolution in Ukraine, and the end of the Ottoman Empire. I also read Eichmann in Jerusalem, because I’m a government nerd and I wanted to understand what the Nazi government looked like from the inside.

What I learned sent me searching for a new home for my family. My research into other nations led us to choose Israel. In my next few essays, I’ll walk through what I learned and show my receipts.

I’ll prove that America has not been a functioning democracy for a long time, and that both parties know it. The Democrats, who tell the public they are the pro-democracy party, not only know we no longer live in a democracy, but are happy to keep on keeping on if it means they can claw back power.

I’ll share the active racism and antisemitism I experienced behind the scenes of the Biden transition team, and at my own think tank. I’ll tell you what the signs of democratic backsliding are and why things in the US are much worse than you know. And, I’ll demonstrate that the Democratic party continues to inhabit a fantasy land where the full restoration of “democracy” is only an election away. I’ll explain why, if you are a Jew, the Democrats have not been your friends for a long time.

Along the way, I’ll report on the antisemitism that both parties have let fester and/or actively stoked. I’ll tell you what I know about my own family’s lives in 1930s Hungary, and how the parallels between my family’s stories and what was happening in Brooklyn in 2023 were too close to ignore.

Finally, I’ll explain how we ended choosing Israel. I didn’t grow up in the traditional Zionist American mold, and Israel was not the first place I thought of when I began to grasp that I needed to get my family out of America. Israel was the country where my Holocaust-surviving family lives because they couldn’t live in Hungary, Romania or Czechoslovakia. It was not an exciting celebration of Jewish rebirth — for my family, Israel was a consolation prize after their homes were destroyed. Tel Aviv was a city of refugee housing and people with numbers on their arm waiting for a bus. But then I visited Israel — and my family — for the first time in 30 years, and I understood that Israel is the future.

Most importantly: I now have hope, and want to give you hope too. These stories are going to be tough to read, but I have also given a lot of thought to what the solutions might be, and I’ll share those as well. I see a future where Israel and the US work together to counter democratic backsliding in their respective countries. I know that historically when Jews get together, great things happen, and right now I see those great things happening in Israel, not the United States. I envision a Middle East where multiple nations join the Abraham Accords, bringing peace, freedom from terror, and building a new economic center of gravity. Though it’s been an extraordinarily difficult few years, for me the future feels bright.

Thanks for coming with me on this research and reporting journey.

Hana