Apologies.

I’ve only been to Berlin, Germany once, and that was for an IBM shoot, not a tourist visit. Still I woke up around four in the morning every morning to try to get lost as well as I could.

The hotel we were staying in had been a bank. It was on a plaza across from Humboldt University and not far from the location or the nazi’s notorious book burnings, the first of which flamed in May, 1933, just a few months after Hitler named himself führer. (The nazis capitalized it. I won’t.)

That book burning was carried out by university students agog over hitler, as so many in amerikkka (including major media outlets and those who advertise on them) are today. The current memorial glows a copper green at night-- a reminder of the spooky glow of the fires interacting with the minerals in the inks of the books they burned.

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Just as I was leaving Ogilvy, Shelly Lazarus, their CEO Emeritus asked me to assume the toughest assignment of my already-long career. That is, to work with Boeing and help them recover and rehabilitate their reputation after two fatal crashes killing more than 300 people flying on their new 737Max jet.

I spent some time thinking about the terrible mistakes I’ve make in my life. What were the “human rules” of mistakes. I came up with this scenario.

If my wife were out of town and I was playing ball with my dog in the house and I broke an heirloom vase that my wife cherished, how could I recover from my clumsiness or stupidity?

1. Clean up the mess.

2. As nearly as possible replace the old one with a new one.

3. The moment my wife arrived home admit, fully, (no if-pologies) what I did and tell her the new vase will arrive by the end of the week.

4. Admit, again, my boneheadedness and promise I’ll never do it again.

I went over all that with the Boeing client. I said something like “people like brands who act like people they like, and here’s how a person you like would apologize.”

Of course, 300 deaths ain’t a make-believe vase but they got the point. Even though Boeing is essentially a defense contractor with essentially no competition and very “candor-resistant.” Talking to them was like talking to Bob MacNamara during Viet Nam.

Maybe you can judge the decency of a person or a society or a business or a grocery store by how well they admit and make good for their mistakes.

All over Europe you'll find little engraved brass plaques called Stolpersteine. There are over 110,000 of the Stolpersteine installed in over 1800 towns and cities in 31 countries. 

The Stolpersteine are engraved with names of Jews, homosexuals and Romani--but mostly Jews--who were murdered via industrial methods by the nazis. They're brass and about 4-inches square. They're in streets, buildings and walkways. You can't spit in Berlin without hitting one.

Today an opposite sort of behavior is happening right here in the country Lincoln called "The last best hope of earth." A hope we are meanly losing.

tump and his hateful and hating willing executioners are trying to rewrite amerikkkan history. They're denying the evil of slavery, the theft of millions from their homes, the brutality of the Middle Passage. They're denying or trying to deny more than 400 years of human brutality, violence and cruelty. tump is placing revisionist placards in front of american museums denying denying denying. Lying lysing lying.

Most people, even educated people, don't know the true extent of the horrors of racism in amerikka. I for one believe reparations are due. If not for slavery, for the cost of having to pay tax yet being denied access to schools, universities, parks, recreation, and more.

Only the indecent would deny what was done. What is being done. Only the cruel would pretend it was small or anomalous.

In fact, here are two plaques tump has placed in the whites house. About his predecessors. This is cartoon-villain pettiness and name calling.

This is not the way healthy societies act. It's that simple.

This is not the way healthy societies act. It's that simple.

This is not the way healthy societies act. It's that simple.

This is the opposite of decency. 

The opposite of our nation's purported christian values.

Meanwhile I was in Boston this weekend for my grandson's fourth birthday party. These markers are all over the city.

Acknowledging a part of the past.

Because history, good, bad, pretty, ugly, proud, embarrassing needs to be true. And needs to be present. Made indelible. 

Of course plaques are not recompense for the past. And no matter how many horrors you can recount, there are probably thousands of more--large and small--you can't even fathom. Plaques don't undo, heal or bring back to life.

But acknowledgement, admission, recognition and public airing of wrong-doing are all steps, necessary steps, toward being decent. They are all necessary steps toward a society of truth and humanity.

We all need myths.

From Superman to Odysseus to Ninja Turtles.

But when the myth overwhelms what happened, when a society is delusional, when a society or a people or an industry can no longer discern the difference between reality and illusion, horrible things--more horrible things--will happen, more often.

This is amerikka today.

An empire of illusion.