Sandi Bachom is a cinematographer and documentary film maker who has dedicated her craft to chronicling the disturbing effects of Donald Trump’s rise to power has wrought on the nation she loves.
Among her credits are True Believers at The Insurrection her eye witness account of the Jan. 6th assault on the Capitol, Blood and Soil in Charlottesville her accounting of the deadly fascist rally in Charlottesville early in Trump’s residency and
Telling Jokes in Auschwitz in which holocaust survivor Werner Reich recounts how he survived the death-camp in part by relying on humor.
Thursday at the Trump arraignment at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington D.C. she filmed an unnamed man who said he was there because his WWII veteran father thought it imperative for them to do everything in their power to stop Trump’s crusade to destroy America.
Ms. Bacholm considers the following among her most profound interviews, and the emotion I felt watching it compelled me to share it here:
This is one of the most profound videos I’ve filmed since the rise of Trump. I asked him why he was there. Tears rolled down his cheeks. His father who was a WWII veteran (like my dad) told him “We gotta stop this guy”. He was a squadron commander and he lost 110 men and he never… pic.twitter.com/FUnRSibJX7
— Sandi Bachom 📹 (@sandibachom) August 5, 2023
“I asked him why he was there. Tears rolled down his cheeks. His father who was a WWII veteran (like my dad) told him ““We gotta stop this guy”. He was a squadron commander and he lost 110 men and he never got a scratch. And he lived his whole life trying to be worthy of their sacrifice. And he asked me to do the same. So this is a very small thing to do. But why everyone in the country isn’t doing this and trying to understand what this man is doing to our country. I don’t get it. But everybody needs to do something to stop this guy”” Please listen to every single word and share.”
Some of the comments on this post:
My father also served in
WWII. Would never talk about it. I urge everyone to read up on the Nazis and the Holocaust. The similarities today are frightening. We can never let this happen again.— Sittig (@Sittig2022) August 5, 2023
Hear, hear.
.
But Trump heads such big rallies… pic.twitter.com/xJsgNC0nmw— ThinkifyUSA 🌊 Think for yourself (@ThinkifyUsa) August 5, 2023
Yup
♥️🇨🇦 History will remember the greatest failure of humanity as that time when some chose to do nothing when they should have done something.
This man deserves all the sunshine. He is doing whatever he can before it’s too late.♥️🇨🇦
— Liz May (@Brookings17) August 5, 2023
💯
I so much respect and admire the depth of his emotion. He's doing what's right, for the right reasons. Bless him, esp thru the next year and a half…
— Larkin Warren (@LarkinWarren) August 5, 2023
Definitely.
We also need to realize that this is not Trump alone. We need to stop the entire infrastructure that supports and encourages the dynamics that make Trump possible.
— DMC (@DonMcGahan) August 5, 2023
Yup
I very much admire the man in the video, and, considering his age and demographic, think him every bit as brave as his father who actually fought the Nazis in battle, because he is doing what he can to prevent that dire necessity from visiting itself in own country.
We could definitely use a couple of million more like him.
I get where this guy is coming from. I think of my father (who was wounded and quite badly on a bombing mission over Europe) and others like him in my small hometown often. They’re all dead now. But THIS is not the country they fought for. So I do what I can, in part to honor them but also to try and give future generations something much better than what we’ve become even though I never had any children of my own.
But the sacrifice so many made haunts me. And the lack of true understanding by so many of even their own family members more so. I couldn’t sleep the night after seeing Saving Private Ryan in the theater when it came out. I went through a range of emotions during the film but walked out of the theater angry. Fighting full-blown rage in fact.
If you recall it opens with the old Ryan shuffling along the road of the WWII cemetery above the Normandy beaches. Many of the dead of D-Day are buried there but many others who died in Europe also are buried there. “Ryan” (a fictional character) had made a late in life pilgrimage to honor the fallen and one man in particular and his family, wife, children and some grandkids trailed behind him as he walked to the section where the grave he wanted to visit was. Like most who fought in that war he didn’t say much but they probably knew the basics – that his brothers had been killed and a special patrol was sent to find him and send him home. Which they did but most of them had been killed. Anyway, when he gets to the grave he’d sought out, after a brief time he breaks down and falls to his knees and the family rushes to him. The camera goes in for a closeup and pans back from his eyes to those of the man he was paying respects to as he rode the landing craft to Omaha Beach.
Then we see the movie unfold and all it took and the lives lost to “save private Ryan”, up to “Caot. Miller” dying on that bridge he could have left to others to defend but since Ryan refused to leave his comrades what was left of Miller’s small rescue team stayed and fought with him. Just when it seemed the worst, Allied reinforcements arrived and “Miller” knew in those last moments he’d fulfilled his mission. He told Ryan: “EARN THIS”, and died.
Time goes back to the present and Ryan’s family has stepped back and he talks to Miller’s grave, saying he’d remembered what he’d said to him on the bridge that day and he’d tried his best. And that his family was there with him. Ryan’s wife comes up and looks at the cross and her husband, the “is that him?” thing. Then he turns to her and ask for her assurance that he’s a good man, that he has lived a good life.
Hence my anger because she clearly does NOT get, or care to try what he’s driving at. Instead, she affects some astonishment that he’d ask such a thing and blithely says of course. But it’s clear she NEVER entertains what he’s really getting at! It struck me right then and there that while there were some I’d known back in my hometown (and in intervening years) who would have grasped what the fictional Ryan was feeling and asking most would not. They’d look at a loved on in that situation, or who had made other sacrifices and lost comrades and might not have survived the war without other’s heroics and wonder “what the hell’s wrong with them?”
And THAT was before, well before Trump came onto the political scene. By the time he did most of these WWII veterans and the people back home who also sacrificed in ways today’s people NEVER would were dead and buried. Given that it’s sadly understandable how a Trump type person could rise to power. The bulk of people don’t periodically stop and remember, truly remember and THINK about all the sacrifice by so many (and not just in uniform and fighting in wars) to slowly (too slowly) move us in increments towards being a “more perfect union.”
Trump and every goddamned person that supported him, as well as those who just couldn’t bring themselves to support and vote for Hillary Clinton because “reasons” took a giant sh*t on all that sacrifice and flushed it down the toilet.
So yes, with advancing age I become angrier and angrier.
This guy speaks for me. I don’t get how anyone who lost family members in WWII can let this coward and jackass destroy the country they fought for. He is a disgrace and should be imprisoned for the rest of his miserable life. And get rid of his SS detail. He does not deserve protection.