After two weeks of preliminary work, helped by some creative maneuvering by three excavators, the entire roof structure of the 4,000-seat, 100-year-old amphitheater at Chautauqua in Western New York, collapsed into a pile of rubble last week.
Destruction is so easy, so quick, so complete. Sometimes it is necessary, but just as often it is not.
With the amphitheater, a good case was made for getting rid of the old to make way for the new. But looking over the webcam at the pile of rubble it now is, memories flash wild. Just seven weeks ago we were sitting in it ourselves, a final time hearing the Massey Organ, a final morning lecture, a final Beethoven Symphony performed by the orchestra. It was there, many years ago, that I heard my first live performance of a Beethoven symphony (No. 7). The moment remains fresh and alive.
Now it is all a pile of rubble waiting to be carted away – progress of a sort. The new amphitheater will have better sight lines, more comfortable seats, easier access for people getting older and technology that wasn’t around when Thomas Edison spent his summers there. But right now it is just a big pile of rubble.
Destruction is so easy, so quick, so complete. Sometimes necessary. Sometimes not. It also comes in many forms, some more obvious than others. The only constant is the need to rebuild when the dust has settled.
That brings me to the presidential campaign, and one particular candidate.
It would seem he believes that in order to justify his campaign slogan about making America great again, he must destroy everything great that America is. With manipulation of facts and manipulation of lies, with pronouncements of fictions presented as facts, by creating enemies where there are none, he is working just as hard as those excavators at Chautauqua. But the roof he will bring down, should he succeed, has all of us under it. And we will become the pile of rubble he will stand upon when declaring himself our hero.
Maybe that is all a little too blunt, a little too partisan. But destruction can envelop you without warning. The amphitheater took just two weeks to bring down and was well planned. Fifteen years ago, the World Trade Center took just two hours. Head on collisions take seconds. Time isn’t really the point. It’s the mess, the heartbreak, the rubble left to be sorted out and removed that we should be concerned about. And then there is the time to rebuild, if rebuilding is possible.
When the rubble left is created by one man’s self-serving rantings about the country we live in, danger lurks just as sure as the poisoned air at Ground Zero after the towers fell.
The words of late U.S. congressman Tom Lantos come to mind. A champion of human rights who passed away in 2008, he put it succinctly: “The veneer of civilization is paper thin. We are its guardians. And we can never rest.”
A Holocaust survivor who came of age as the Nazis moved into Hungary, Lantos knew first-hand how quickly a society can become inhumane. Overnight, he went from a boy thinking about college to a Jew being hunted by the Nazis. In the rubble that was left, he was the only member of his family to survive.
“The veneer of civilization is paper thin.” One day you are having lunch at your favorite cafe in Budapest, a week later you are slave labor building a bridge for your occupiers.
Paper thin. It is an easy thing to forget here in safe little New Hampshire. After all, we are part of America: mighty, protector of the world, 240 years old and still going strong. Steel, armor and our nuclear stockpile protect our neighborhoods.
Words can be mighty things as well. They can stir a pot or light a flame, and catch in unexpected ways. Words that dehumanize, exploit fear, belittle those with whom we disagree and cast suspicion on anyone who is different, those kinds of words diminish us all. They burn everything they touch. They embolden attitudes and actions of the worst kind. Left out of control, they will show us just how paper thin our veneer is.
“We are its guardians” is the employment we must consider. To not be silent. To not accept words, ideas or actions that bring oppression to any of our fellow citizens. To challenge any presidential candidate who would tear us down and turn us against each other for his own personal ego gratification. To not be manipulated by false ideas presented as fact, or facts presented incompletely.
Remember, the heart of civilization is civility. And we can never rest.
(John Gfroerer of Concord owns a video production company based at the Capitol Center for the Arts.)