“The road to democracy is not a freeway. It is a toll road on which we pay by accepting and carrying out our civic responsibilities.”
I begin with a quote by the U.S. General Lucius D. Clay, who died in 1978. His name isn’t as well-known as Roosevelt, Churchill, Eisenhower, or even George Marshall. Yet, he was one of the first figures that came to my mind as I started to process the catastrophic events that unfolded in DC last week.
Clay was the U.S. General appointed to oversee the transition from active combat to occupation in Germany at the end of World War II. He oversaw the processes of “denazification, reconstruction, and governance” after Germany’s unconditional surrender in 1945. This period of reconstruction is a stark contrast to the current state of affairs in the US, as discussed in "The World Turned Upside Down" and "US Economy: A Sinking Ship?".
