Dr. Fukuyama was wrong about the end of history. We were wrong to stop rowing, and wrong to think we’d ride the currents of history towards progress. Enlightenment lies upstream. Always has. So dust yourself off, take a breath, and get to rowing.

The diagnosis looks bleak. The court will be red for decades to come, environmental regulations will be decided by climate deniers, and government agencies will be gutted. Rights are at stake and bigotry is in. I’m looking at the U.S. with the history of both my family and countries for which I have citizenship (the U.S. and Germany) in mind. Germans understand better than most how quickly a nation can change. So let’s look back to see how the pendulum swung.

The Weimar Republic was Germany’s first experiment with democracy. They granted women the right to vote two years before the United States did. Magnus Hirschfeld’s institute for research on sexuality and gender identity led the world in fighting for the rights and a greater understanding of the queer community. Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Freud, Weber, all products of the Weimar republic. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a bastion of scientific and cultural innovation. Progress seemed inevitable, until it wasn’t.

My German side of the family are the Kreitens. My German grandfather was a Nazi. It didn’t matter whether he believed in the philosophy or that he was drafted. All that matters is that he wore the uniform of a nation that was throwing human beings into ovens and sewing Jewish twin’s spines together just to see what would happen. He had a choice. We always do.

My German grandmother tried to raise a family in a country that was cannibalizing itself. She smuggled goods and tried to keep her mother from getting in trouble for talkin’ smack ‘bout those, “Stupid brown shirts”. That kind of talk could have gotten her hanged. That kind of talk got another family member hanged, Karl Robert Kreiten. I don’t know if he was a great uncle, a third cousin or what, but I know his name and know he was family.

Progress hasn’t been consistent in the U.S. either. The Greenwood district of Tulsa Oklahoma was referred to by Booker T. Washington as “Negro wall street”. Amidst Jim Crow, black professionals established an oasis of self-sufficiency. Black owned newspapers, law offices, mechanics, theatres, and schools served the community that made them. They made money. More than many white people in the area. Some fifteen years of lifting one another up and building community made progress seem inevitable. Until the 1921 race massacre. It only took three days.

My American side of the family are the McDaniel’s. My American grandfather was a dark skinned black man. He played the trombone in the U.S. Army’s jazz band during WWII. He played alongside greats like Dizzy Gillespie, ran from cops in sundown towns, made our nation and my people look good. He was a doctor. He worked all hours of the day to deliver black babies that white doctors ignored. He did good for his community. He did well for himself and our family. An American dream. He got his clients poached and was saddled with medical malpractice lawsuits orchestrated by white doctors once they realized that their racism was making him rich. A dream deferred.

Even this was progress. His grandfather owned a car, a luxury rare even for whites at the time. That success ended in a lynching. His son dropped out of college and went home to take care of the family after the lynching. This isn’t ancient history. I’m only 34 but I met my great grandfather, whose bright future had been stolen by terrorists in robes. Things aren’t great now, but they’ve been worse.

My grandmother was a dark skinned black woman, and a computer programmer. Many women were at the time. Her love for language and logic persists generations later. Poetical science, as Ada Lovelace put it, runs through my family’s veins. Although she died of cancer before programming became “men’s work”, she probably would have been pushed out of the industry once people realized how important programming would end up being. She could have gone from being born under Jim Crow to seeing Harlem erupt with joy when we got our first black president. She could have been here to see a rapist with a long history of racism take the presidency, and remind us that he was hardly the first.

Now, In the Germany I know and love, the public couldn’t imagine invading its neighbors. The Germany I call home is disgusted with the atrocities of the Holocaust, and long abandoned the blood and iron philosophy that both birthed our nation and nearly destroyed it. The Dachau concentration camp was converted into a museum, serving to educate the public on the horrors that took place there. Many camps were. I don’t even know where my grandfather is buried, but I live a block away from Karl Robert Kreiten Straße. Weimar, the third Reich, and modern day, linked to one another through living memory.

Yet, In the United states I know, our history is sanitized and our filter bubbles distort our self-image. The Angola slave plantation was converted into the largest maximum security prison in the country, where slaves pick cotton for as little as two cents an hour, in a state whose justice system has repeatedly been found to discriminate based on race. Many on the left are heartbroken by how the U.S. is changing. Mine breaks both for the ways it’s changing and the ways it hasn’t.

History reminds us that anything one generation behind can be one generation ahead if we aren’t vigilant. Let’s not forget how easy it was for Germany to fall into fascism, or how hard it was to make it into the country it is today. The U.S. played a crucial role in forcing Germans to gaze into the mirror and see what they really were. I’ve talked to people who lived through that period, growing up and knowing that their nation’s character was corrupt and their own families complicit. You can’t fall uphill, and if we sit back and hope we float upstream, American children will wear the same disappointed look that a generation of Germans knew well.

Yet, even after the election, we aren’t nearly as lost as Germany once was, and aren’t being run by nearly as formidable or sinister a party. While our country is sick, it isn’t terminal. History shows us that progress isn’t inevitable or consistent, but it’s possible. There’s hope, but it won’t be easy.

Change comes slowly or at critical junctures. This is one such juncture. Progress doesn’t come from showing people who already agree with you how ideologically pure you are. It doesn’t come from making enemies out of allies. It doesn’t come from only voting every four years in a state that won’t affect the outcome. It doesn’t come from repeatedly being wrong about what the American people want. It doesn’t come from imposing language you JUST started using in an arrogant manner. It doesn’t come from giving up on systemic change. It doesn’t come from optimizing arguments to get the most clicks and change the fewest minds. It doesn’t come from convincing the youth that continuing to do what we’ve been doing is the only way it can be done. It doesn’t come from letting the opposition choose the battleground and falling face first into their traps. It doesn’t come from ignoring lessons of civil rights leaders who brought about more change than we have. It doesn’t come from a myopic focus on national politics you have little effect on while ignoring local politics. It doesn’t come from convincing citizens that we all have a voice, as long as we say democrat or republican. It doesn’t come from slogans that are easy for honest people to misinterpret.

Change for the better comes from community building, long-term strategic thinking, taking the right steps when it matters most, and voting. Don’t let our two party system convince you that all politics is party politics.

The abolitionist movement wasn’t run by a political party. The women’s suffrage movement wasn’t run by a political party. The civil rights movement wasn’t run by a political party. The labor movement wasn’t run by a political party. The environmental movement wasn’t run by a political party. The gay rights movement wasn’t run by a political party.

They organized, they were tactical, and they helped shaped politics and priorities. I know it isn’t easy to find common cause with somebody who thinks your religion is backwards, or thinks your identity is a mental illness, or sees you as a demographic threat. But If Marcus Garvey was willing to work with the Klan if it meant good for his people, surely we can find common cause with Joe Rogan fans on at least a single issue. Meet people where they are, nudge ‘em in the right direction as best you can, and listen.

Republicans have found a way to ruthlessly pursue their policy agenda. They earned their long-term wins. It took decades of effort for them to dismantle a woman’s right to choose. It took cut-throat opportunism to stack the court. They framed issues better, they appealed to the country’s base instincts better, they dominated school board meetings and neighborhood councils. Mitch didn’t break a sweat appointing Coney Barrett in an election year after saying we couldn’t appoint Garland in an election year. We cried, “Hypocrisy!” as if they value the words they speak. It’s hard to get the boot off your neck without getting your hands dirty, and we need to learn that lesson. Republicans reached into the hadal depths of U.S. history and resurfaced the hateful leviathan many thought slain. It fights for them.

The DNC has yet to prove that they can play politics as well (and ruthlessly) as Republicans. So stop looking to the DNC to save you, they won’t. Don’t stop voting, but let’s get off our asses, like our ancestors did, and build community. Party with purpose, protest, reach out, join organizations that are doing good work, and, if you’ve got it in you, lead.

I left to go do that in Germany. I’ll do my best to hold things down here, voting, organizing, getting my Master’s degree in political science, and trying to reduce the AFD to an embarrassing memory. I hope Americans can get their priorities straight. The moral arc of the universe is long, and jagged, and malleable. It’s far too long to measure its curvature in a single moment. Whether it bends towards justice or not is up to us. So get involved and stay woke, cause evil never sleeps.

Viel Gluck Amis, y’all got this.

• D.M.

It’s Mulchfest Time!

Wrap up your holidays and say goodbye to your tree at Mulchfest! NYC Parks will be collecting trees for chipping from December 26-January 12. Please remember to remove all lights, ornaments, and netting before bringing the tree to a Mulchfest site. Location and services are listed below.

On January 11 and 12 from 10 am - 2 pm, NYC Parks will be chipping trees at Marcus Garvey Park. Mulch will be available for participants to take home.

Please see attached for the digital copy of the Mulchfest flyers. One is in English solely and other PDF has multiple languages. Help us spread the word and be sure to stop by or drop off a tree.