What politicians  or media people do or say can be critically important, but I sometimes think we make much too much of it, one way or the other. I am not especially interested in the idea of reporters or politicians as moral leaders, teaching me wright and wrong.

To me, this is begging for disappointment and despair. If I don’t know right from wrong, I am not going to learn it on Fox News or CNN.

It will take me a long while to digest Charlottesville and what it really says or means. Like so many others, I  was saddened and shocked.

I did not ever imagine I would see hundreds, if not  thousands of young American men and women marching down a Main Street of an America City with their photogenic torches,  arms raised in Nazi salute, vowing openly to remove Jews and African-Americans from America. The things that go crawl in the night usually stay out of the light, and when they don’t, they usually die in the light.

People used to hide those feelings, there was always a great shame attached to them here. When I saw the great, wide, deep and heartfelt response across America to this jarring parade of hatred, I saw what I feel is the true heart and soul of America rising up, finally shocked off of Facebook.

America is a mess at times – like now – but not nearly the kind of mess it needs to be in for Nazi’s to rise to power. And it is still by far the best mess I know of.

Only in America: Witness all the tough young men from the march who are now complaining bitterly that the disclosure of their identities is unfair and is damaging their careers and social lives.  One of them wrote on Twitter that he couldn’t get a date now. This is the thing about America that is so rich and unique: can you imagine a true Nazi complaining about being outed on Twitter and chased off Match.com?

But bigots and thugs are not the only ones who spread fear, the well meaning and anxious and the people who make so much money off of cable news are much better at it.

Many people are sounding the alarm, saying it would be dangerous to relax. But does anyone in our world really think the danger is relaxing too much in our country? Along with Jews and blacks and the alarm-sounders on Facebook and the mobs on Twitter, we would first have to get rid of smart phones, Ipads, computers and almost all of social media.

Jews and blacks and women and Native-Americans and refugees and immigrants, legal or otherwise, know better than to try relaxing in this country, the moral philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that the problem with many Jews is that despite their hubris, they are generally ignorant of the true nature of politics and political systems.

They never see it coming, they are blindsided every time. That should keep them from dozing off.

African-Americans live in a bizarre, almost surreal world where almost every single one of them speaks of a racist and oppressive- and sometimes murderous –  white culture, while very few whites agree or see racism at all. So many black people see whites as living with their heads in the sand.

A black child  sees a statue and sees a moment to brutality and slavery, a young white man looks at the same statue and sees a noble heritage. A white person sees the police as protectors and guardians, almost every black parent int the country sees them as something very different.

We live on different planets, I suppose we always have. Men are continuously stunned by the fear and anger that surfaces among women about men.

Women, Hispanics, Native-Americans, legal and illegal immigrants and refugees are anything but relaxed, just look at the news. We are told almost hourly that what we most need is to be anxious and angry all of the time, every minute of the day.

Like him or not, I do not look for any President, surely not this one, for moral direction. The idea that strong statements from him about race and bigotry would suddenly bring our country together and send the Nazi’s running back to their holes is a stretch for me, a pathway to disappointment and anxiety.

I am more inclined to look within than without. It is always easier, wrote James Baldwin, “to give a name to the evil without than than to locate the terror within. And yet,” he wrote, “the terror within is far truer and  far more powerful than any of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant.”

I may be both blind and self-delusional, one of those much maligned Jews who is born blind, and who never acts until it is too late, but I must also try to be honest. I do not see a Nazi nation around me, not in the White House, not in government, not in the military,  and certainly not in the eyes of the hundreds of thousands of brave and wonderful young people  who are taking to the streets every day to remind us of what we are not.

I hear them and believe them. I accept what we are not. Isn’t what we are bad enough? A lot of young white men, it seems are in great trouble, living in confusion and despair, making the very worst decisions about what will help them.

For my part, I do not believe that old men like me understand how the truth and reality of the world, or define it. We belong to the past, not the future, we have nothing to prove and little at stake. All we can do is stand by the sidelines and wave our handkerchiefs at the idealistic and energetic warriors of the future. No one is going to take their future in America away from them unless they wish to give it up.

And Donald Trump has no more to say about that future than I do, and good for the future on both counts. Nobody is looking to either one of us for that, we are the men whose knees hurt and sometimes need a strategy to bend down.

As for us Jews, history has already taken a good swipe at replacing us, our Nazi’s are late.

More than half of the Jews in America – including me – have left the faith behind or (sorry grandma), worse, married gentiles and survived. We are mostly fading into the American tapestry, the very one I believe very strongly will be torn and sullied from time to time, but which will never be replaced or rewoven by Nazis.

A good friend asked me yesterday how he should feel about Charlottesville and the young Nazi’s marching with their shields. I said I am not a seer or a prophet or a pundit, I can only say how I feel about it, and what I do is to look away from the politicians and media pundits and and gasbags – in case you have not noticed, they have gotten everything wrong for decades, and seem to be stunned by everything. They follow history, they don’t lead it.

I wouldn’t pay too much attention to people who march in the night with hateful banners to get on TV either.

I would look more to the people shouting from the rooftops and town squares what it is we are not. I listen to them. And then get on with my own good life.