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Friday evening, just an hour or two after this show featuring a conversation with Leon Schagrin, an actual survivor of the Holocaust who was liberated at Auschwitz 78 years earlier, we saw the video of a group of police officers beat an innocent young man to death. Whether at a concentration camp in Germany under the orders of Hitler, or on the streets of the United States, we have witnessed the seeming unlimited capacity for cruelty that one human can inflict on others.

I still had Leon’s words swimming around in my mind, having a tough time reconciling the stories he told with this lovely old man talking with us over Zoom, unable to comprehend that level of brutality, savagery, of sadism, and thinking about how important it is that people listen to that interview.  We must share the stories of Leon and the other survivors, and pass them down to future generations to insure that nothing like this ever happens again.

But atrocities like those that emanated from Hitler and his followers do continue in places and sizes and permutations that civilized minds can’t comprehend, and occasionally the tormentors, torturers and murderers are caught in the act. And that’s what we witnessed Friday night when the video of the gruesome, horrific beating of Tyre Nichols was released.

Meanwhile, in another corner of the unthinkable, mass shootings are back in the news and in our peripheral vision again. So of course, the fascist governor of the state of FloriDUH takes this opportunity to push for no-permit needed open carrying of weapons. Yes, that was introduced today in Florida’s legislature. I’ll talk with Samantha Barrios, the new Florida state director of Giffords.org, the organization founded by former Rep Gabby Giffords and her husband Sen. Mark Kelly to combat our big problems with guns. They’ve set up a phone number so you can register your thoughts on that with the governor’s office. The number to call is 347-868-6798.

No video today, as the video streaming was fubar. Hopefully all will be working again tomorrow…