Answering a German on Trump

A good friend of mine posted the following from a friend of his on Facebook after the November presidential election. He and his friend are both German. His comment is first and my response is below hers. 

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My friend ___ writes to the Americans she likes so much. She's been living there for years. I cannot express what's within my heart as good as she does:

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Dear friends, 

I can totally understand that we all have and should have different, sometimes opposing views on all kinds of issues, but what lies beyond my grasp this time is this:

All Americans that I have ever met were people who held up certain values such as decency, dignity and tolerance. You would, so it has always seemed to me, judge the leaders you chose with incredible scrutiny to ensure that they embodied these ideals. This would sometimes seem exaggerated to the European mindset, I thought. I felt that we sometimes had a much more laissez-faire attitude with politicians philandering or leaving the path of integrity than you did. After all, they are all just human....

But I just don't see how this fits with the person you have now chosen as your leader? How did you, the people, become convinced so suddenly that it was ok to throw overboard the values you cherish so dearly? Where has all this hatred come from all of a sudden, how was it possible for one rambunctious seemingly clueless rogue to unleash it?

There is a chance that the man will be humbled by the immensity of the office and that the rambunctiousness will wear off. I doubt that but what I'm saddened about even more, is to know that there are people out there (and yes, we have them over here, too) who have elected him because they have fallen in love with the power of hate unleashed. This nasty beast of hatred is somehow trying to get a hold of trust, tolerance and respect. What ever happens - let's let this not happen. Not in America or anywhere else on this incredible planet!

And if someone has an idea of how to answer the question that baffles me, please share your thoughts.

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Dear ___,

Over a month ago I noticed your above posting on ____'s Facebook page and wrote my response. Due to other duties and distractions I have only now finished editing it. Since Mr. Trump will be sworn in as our new president within the next several days I’m glad that this reply is still very relevant. Here it is…

Because you asked, I hope to help you understand why some Americans tolerate…and propagate…so much hate. It’s about power, control, and ideology. I think that you are correct in saying that (many) Americans hold up certain values such as decency, dignity, and tolerance. For these and other reasons this presidential election was very difficult for millions of Americans like me. Those who voted for Trump would disagree with you that they threw their cherished values overboard, but some might agree at least in part that he is “one rambunctious seemingly clueless rogue”. Trump said many outrageous things on the campaign trail and some of his behavior and comments as a private citizen during his 70 years has certainly left something to be desired in his character. It is clear from your message that you believe Trump embodies the worst America has to offer and have three times associated the word “hate” with him and his supporters. I suppose you would, then, agree with candidate Clinton when she said that half his supporters were “deplorables”. How tolerant and inclusive is it for a presidential candidate to insult many millions of Americans in this way? Do Germans and other Western Europeans think America would be better off with a president who has been at the center of at least five major political scandals (and involved in 15 or more) over a 25-30 year time period? In one of these scandals a fellow lawyer and former business partner (Vince Foster) was found dead and in another four Americans associated with an embassy in Libya (including the ambassador) were killed. Do you not think Americans aren’t cynical when Hillary talks about being a champion for women’s rights while her Clinton Foundation accepts millions of dollars from some of the world’s worst abusers of women like Saudi Arabia? How about when her husband makes a plea to help earthquake-ravaged Haiti by donating to the Clinton Foundation only for most of that money to never reach the Haitians (and the little that did to go to cronies)? We have judged Hillary and Co. “with incredible scrutiny to ensure that they embodied these ideals (decency, dignity and tolerance)” and found them seriously wanting.

You mentioned that “we all have and should have different, sometimes opposing views on all kinds of issues”. I don’t think it is necessarily good that we should have opposing points of view on some important issues, but people certainly do have them. A free society tolerates such things. Totalitarian societies do not. Until eight years or so ago, the average American never heard the words “United States”, “religious freedom” and “threat to” in the same sentence before. Since then we have heard it a lot. A “clueless”, inexperienced, one-term senator from the state of Illinois who was elected president had everything to do with it. He was expert at preaching unity and peace only to deliberately pit American against American. As a matter of fact, race relations under this supposed ‘unifier’ have deteriorated significantly during his presidency. He repeatedly lied regarding his health care agenda (no, as a matter of fact we weren’t able to keep our doctor or health plan) and the Affordable Health Care Plan is anything but affordable. For Obama, ideology is over and above everything, and it is very telling that his administration has done everything in their power to force the self-less and self-sacrificing nuns of The Little Sisters of the Poor and other groups to violate their consciences and religious beliefs for political purposes. Hillary Clinton had promised to continue the worst policies of Barack Obama in attacking the vision the founders of this country laid down for us. Some of them paid for this vision with their lives. The Democrat Party and their supporters (including the vast majority of media outlets) are the ones responsible for calling all of those who disagree with them, “racists, bigots, homophobes, Islamaphobes, mysoginists,” etc. Do you really believe that the half of America who are responsible for electing Trump are these kind of people? I should hope not. Liberals and conservatives have a radically different vision of what is best for America. The difference is that one of them has been using methods of intimidation like name-calling to silence the other with the aid of the media and the highest reaches of government.

Is it right for a photographer to be forced to take photos at an event against her beliefs? Or a florist or baker to be financially ruined for declining to take on jobs they are morally opposed to? How about a religion teacher losing his job for actually teaching what is in the bible? Well, they have in my country over the past few years. In America one of our cherished beliefs is the freedom of religion, which is enshrined in our constitution, and we will fight for that right. This is not the same as “the right to worship” as the outgoing president has said, which is a private matter, but the freedom to express religious beliefs in public. During her campaign, Hillary made a comment that churches should be forced to change some of their core beliefs. That dovetails very nicely with what her campaign manager did several years ago in creating fake “Catholic” groups in order to undermine that church’s core teachings in America (“A Catholic Spring”). Those are not the words and actions of tolerance but totalitarianism. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what The Soviet Union did in creating and controlling fake “peace” groups during the Viet Nam War to undermine the U.S. cause (e.g. The World Council of Churches). 

Here is an important question that needs to be asked: did people vote for Trump or against Hillary? Even though many of us may have been tempted and some did vote for a third-party candidate, all Americans knew that one of the candidates from the two major political parties was going to win. Western Europeans may not have any real understanding just how many Americans distrust and dislike Hillary and Bill Clinton and the corruption that follows them - and it is no small wonder since our main media outlets are themselves corrupt - so I suppose the election results were a shock to you. They were a shock to me to, because Trump’s media coverage was over 90 percent negative. One astute observer said that: “Trump’s supporters take him seriously but not literally. Trump’s opponents take him literally but not seriously.” So when Trump said “hateful” things like deporting millions of illegal immigrants his supporters could shrug some of it off as hyperbole, but his detractors saw a constant stream of buses filled with South and Central Americans crossing the Mexican border. For many of us, Trump is a wild card. We just don’t know where his presidency will lead. Hillary was just the opposite. We knew her too well and did not buy the lie that she was more “in-control”, “even-tempered”, or “fit for office” than Trump. On the contrary, her temper is well known. So were her policies.

 

So where does all the hate come from? Some of it came from protestors at Trump rallies who are on video admitting they were paid by people in the Democrat party to cause trouble. Some of it comes from the aftermath of the election when angry Hillary supporters said vile things on social media and “dis-invited” Trump voters from their Thanksgiving dinners. Some of it certainly came from riots and protests across the country, especially when these ‘tolerant’ people pulled at least one Trump supporter out of his car and sent him to a hospital…not to mention the most recent example of four blacks (two men and two women) who beat and tortured a mentally handicapped white man while using Trump as an excuse. Republican voters picked Trump as their candidate because they were sick and tired of failed promises from “the establishment” and found someone who wasn’t intimidated by the media and the rampant political correctness. Do you now see, ___, how it is that American’s chose their leader? It wasn’t out of hate. It was for disgust of corruption in Washington D.C. and a rejection of a biased media. It was for rejection of political insiders who spent their entire adult lives conniving to get into the White House and after getting there conniving to get there again solely for their own egos, aggrandizement, and personal enrichment. It was for the real fear of the continuation of the socialist agenda of a president who can not take responsibility for his many failures and who has single-handedly decimated the democrat party in state governments and in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives due to his policies.

So, to summarize, Americans did not suddenly throw the values we cherish so dearly overboard by electing Trump. In desperation we elected him in order to attempt to preserve the values we cherish so dearly. Voting for Trump was a very difficult decision exactly because he is so flawed and is not trusted by many of us, but we could never vote for Clinton because to do so would essentially be a suicide vote for the country we know and love.

“There is a chance that the man will be humbled by the immensity of the office and that the rambunctiousness will wear off.” I hope so. Unfortunately Obama never was humbled by the office. His ideological intransigence and arrogance has done much damage to the United States and around the world. What kind of a president - what kind of a man - would hold countries like Nigeria hostage in combating the brutal Islamist group Boko Haram until they succumbed to his radical social agenda? Obama and Hillary don’t care about people, they care about an agenda. Trump? I guess we’ll find out.

Tschuss…

Brendan

Facing East

It struck me that the priest was leading a charge. He was front and center facing the alter and above the alter was the church’s crucifix. Behind him were the ‘generals’ who ministered to him (the alter servers) and behind them was the ‘army’ (the congregation). We were Christ’s soldiers and all facing the same direction - east - which is the direction the Church has historically always believed Jesus would return. My eyes were not upon the priest, per se, but on the host as he raised and consecrated it into the body and blood of Jesus and especially on the only figure actually facing us: Christ crucified.

There is something very unsettling about it.  

We are living in an age in which Muslim fundamentalists are physically killing others who do not believe like them from around the world, including genocide of Christians in Iraq, shootings in the U.S. and, most recently, the beheading of a priest in France. Additionally, radical Western secularists are metaphorically killing Christianity in the public square. In The Lord’s Prayer we ask to not be put to the test (…and lead us not into temptation…) but the test is coming. Some people are already being tested - photographers, bakers, florists, fire chiefs, etc. - and are incurring heavy financial and social costs, but the noose is tightening for the rest of us. If there is not a reversal or at least a significant slowing of our government’s agenda we will soon be 2^nd class citizens in “the land of the free and home of the brave” who have many jobs closed to us because we refuse to compromise the Word of God. We must all say yes to abortion, transgenderism, alternative marriage, climate control, and other ‘progressive’ programs or pay the penalty in employment, fines, and jail time.

With my eyes falling on the sculpted figure of the tortured body hung on a tree, the priest facing it reminds me that this is my Lord and King. We may be looking to the east to await Jesus second coming, but no one ever promised that he will not first ask us to follow him up the cross.

Addendum:

Since the conclusion in the 1960’s of the church council known as Vatican II, Catholic priests in the Roman Rite (which is the form of the Mass the vast majority of Catholics worldwide are familiar with) changed their orientation from facing east (and having their “backs to the people”) to always facing the congregation during Mass. Today, increasingly more Catholics are being drawn to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass (also known as the Tridentine or Latin Mass) in an attempt to capture an atmosphere more conducive to reverence, sacredness, and mystery than they often find in the Ordinary Form (Novos Ordo) that has been in place since Vatican II. Benedict XVI permitted the Extraordinary Form to be celebrated again under his pontificate and wrote that it was his desire that the two forms of the Mass influence each other to better balance each other. As I understand it, Pope Benedict seemed to think that some aspects of the Extraordinary Form needed updating while the Ordinary Form needed to be more properly actualized according to the real intent of Vatican II as opposed to the “spirit of Vatican II” that brought in much abuse. The last two times I have been to Mass at the nearby army base I have been witness to what appears to be one of the corrections Pope Benedict hoped for. The Mass was of the Ordinary Form but with the ad orientem (facing east) orientation. Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect for the Congregation of the Faith in Rome, recently encouraged all priests whose church orientations are conducive to such an arrangement to position themselves ad orientem during Mass. Pope Francis, however, does not appear supportive. Popes, like all people, have their preferences.       

By Blood and By Faith

One of them is related to me by blood and the other by faith. Their names are written together, one directly above the other, on the most important document of the United States of America: the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Stone - the third name directly below that of John Hancock - is reportedly related to me on my mother’s side. However, it is the man directly under Stone whom I want to say a few words about.

If you look at all the signers of the Declaration there is only one who says where he is from: Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Why is this? In his book Render Unto Caesar, Charles J. Chaput quotes that the signers risked “their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor”, but when Hancock asked Carroll to sign it was an even bigger gamble for the Maryland resident but he “Most willingly” did it. By doing so Carroll broke Maryland’s law. It was illegal for him to be politically active or earn a living in his profession as an attorney. He could not even vote for those who could run for office. Carroll was a second-class citizen in the colony of his birth.

        

When Maryland was first founded by adherents of Carroll’s Church fleeing persecution in England, Christians could worship as they saw fit. However, within a few years this all changed when new immigrants arrived and established Anglicanism as the colony’s religion. Due to Old World animosities, laws were established to stifle the growth and influence of Carroll’s religion.

By advertising where he lived on the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll was leaving no doubt as to where to find him if the American experiment failed. He was not only declaring independence from British rule, but also from religious intolerance in Maryland. Even if the colonists succeeded, he might still have failed to secure his own religious freedom within America. It was a gamble all the way around, but one that paid off for the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was willing to prove with his blood to suspicious colleagues that loyalty to his faith and to the American cause were not in opposition. To the contrary, when Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in America 55 years later he concluded that, “…American Catholics are both the most obedient of the faithful and the most independent citizens.” As it turned out, Catholicism did not oppose American democracy but instead strengthened it.

        

After John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, the only man to announce where he lived and whose loyalty was undoubtedly held under the most suspicion by his colleagues lived on as the last signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Introduction to Not All of Us

I had my photos all in place for Not All of Us and had even published the blog when I had my wife, Marie, look it over. She had already heard me read the essay to her and liked it, but was reluctant about having to read it online. She didn’t like some of the photos I used and said she was just “really picky”. I thought they made my point quite well and particularly liked the one I was going to use as my Facebook profile picture. It showed two rows of naked women curled up in a fetal position covered with plastic-wrap on white Styrofoam…packaged just like in our local supermarket meat departments. That’s just how porn treats women, so why didn’t Marie like it? She gave me an insight I hadn’t considered before due her own experience with a perverse college teacher. I was showing provocative images while attempting to discredit the images. Because sexual images linger so strongly in the mind, my words against porn might get eclipsed by the pictures themselves and result in exactly the opposite of what I hoped my essay would do. This is what happened in Marie’s experience. Her teacher had her modify her original draft to be more graphic. Depending on one’s topic and audience, being graphic may or may not be a good thing, but it turned out to Marie’s disgust that this teacher appeared to revel in the imagery instead of heeding the warning.

For this reason I modified TIME’s cover photo to use as my Facebook profile picture because it exactly proves Marie’s point.

Not All of Us

I think I was about 12 years old. I was visiting relatives for the summer outside of where my family was living in Colorado. I was sick with a cold and restricted to an upstairs bedroom. Since I was bored and alone, at my request an older cousin brought me something to read. What I wanted were comic books, what I got was my very first exposure to Penthouse magazine. Now this essay could easily be one of those testimonies of how I descended into the dark world of porn and how it ruined my life - just like it has for countless other guys - but it’s not. Did I find those dirty magazines exciting? Oh yeah. Was I exposed to other opportunities of seeing Penthouse and Playboy magazines thereafter? Of course. Did I at some point acquire my own magazines, hide them, and share them with other kids? No. Not one. Ever. Why not? I grew up being taught that “dirty magazines” were bad (long before the internet). As far as I knew so did all other kids, but some boys indulged in them anyway and I didn't. Again, why not? Blind obedience to my parents? Fear of punishment for being caught? I don’t know for sure but did believe that only sleaze-balls looked at dirty mags and I didn't want to be associated with them. However, what may have originally begun as an aversion to parental disapproval and punishment eventually matured into a self-policing of not allowing myself to view porn or even looking at women baring it all, and that in turn gave way to a deeper understanding of how the objectification of women into purely objects of pleasure is harmful to individuals and all of society.

When living in Brazil as a high school exchange student, I remember walking out of a house while several boys around my age sat around the TV watching a porn movie. Several years later I quickly turned my back on a gay porn video in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after a friend took me to a house party full of guys, like my friend, who had that kind of inclination. I didn't, but my friend probably held out hope I’d come around. Another time - perhaps even earlier that night - my friend took me to a gay bar where I had the unique opportunity of being visually undressed by his friends while I played outside volleyball. For the first time in my life I really understood what many women must experience when they are visually (let alone physically) assaulted by lustful men: I felt seriously violated. Yet another time we ended up at a party in which a teenager drugged out of his mind stumbled into the room with a much older man who owned a Jiffy Lube. It was obvious that this young man was the sex toy of the other. He had no other value. Unfortunately for this young man, the owner of the oil-change shop could act out his fantasies on. That is not the case when one immerses themselves in porn on the internet and in magazines and videos: they remain intangible fantasies. I think it is for this reason than for any other as I got older why I refused to indulge in what was enslaving increasingly more and more men (and even women) in the U.S. and apparently the world at large. It wasn't so much because it was “wrong” or “a sin”, or that I would meet with parental disapproval, but because porn promised something it couldn't deliver: fulfillment. If one has an impulse or strong desire to keep coming back to something with increasing frequency then it is clearly not satisfying a need, but is resulting in an addiction. Sometimes these addictions can result in harm and violence. Are marriages stronger for the use of porn or weaker? Are spouses/partners having a harder time sexually pleasing the user/addict? One can ask a dozen or more questions like these, but the bottom line is this: porn is a drag on individuals, relationships, and society and the data backs it up. Utah’s governor hasn't declared it a health hazard for no reason. Even TIME magazine recently devoted an issue addressing the harmful effects of porn. 

All the people in failing and failed relationships and in counseling for porn addictions very clearly indicate that their use has serious detrimental side effects. What people do on their own time is indeed their own business, but if they think what they do only affects them they are deceiving themselves. What we think about and what we do on a daily basis reinforces our neural networks, and pornographic images leave a powerful imprint. Much more is known today about the damaging effects of pornography then ever before, and how it alters brain chemistry to progressively desire more stimulation resulting in increasingly hard-core porn addiction. But it sometimes doesn't stop there. It can stop with child porn or even child sexual predation. It’s reported that 80% of untraceable internet activity - referred to as “the dark web” - is child porn. Most porn users don’t become pedophiles, of course, but it does make me wonder just how celebrities like The Who guitarist Pete Townshend and Subway spokesman Jerod Fogle ended up being titillated by children. As everyone will recall, The Catholic Church got beat up pretty badly a while back regarding the “Priest Abuse Scandal”. There isn't a whole lot of good to say about that shameful episode except this: it slammed the door on “pedophilia chic”…at least for awhile. In her book, Adam and Eve after the Pill, Mary Eberstadt discusses how certain elites in influential positions (writers, Hollywood types, etc) were trying to soften-up the public regarding adult-minor sexual relations, but when the priest scandal hit those on the political left could not help but attack the hated Catholic hierarchy. The unfortunate problem for them was that by attacking the Church they stopped their own forays into child/adolescent sex. From evil good really can spring forth, and we at least can be grateful that perhaps one generation was spared, but unfortunately the proponents of adult-minor sex are back. Yes, pedophilia chic is gearing up once again.

Late one evening in the country of Luxembourg a few years ago I walked into the lobby of my hotel. No one was there, but on the large-screen TV were a naked man and woman in intimate union. I watched it for as long as my legs took me to the TV and the switch to change the station. It wasn't long, but the image remains. Wait, did I say they were in “intimate union”? That’s actually the last thing they were in. What I really saw were two people who were physically engaged but emotionally disengaged. Despite the intimacy of the act, the man’s face struck me as emotionless and cold, and the woman only had hands for herself. I did not invite these images into my mind, but there they are. However, I do think they are telling. Pornography is not about male and female (and certainly not about male-male or female-female) becoming one through sexual union, but about personal desire and/or gratification. It is the lie that keeps on lying, for one can never become fulfilled or gratified through self-stimulation and by objectifying and fantasizing about others.

I do not view pornography as a lifestyle choice but as a weakness. I see absolutely no redeeming value in it but only frustration and am not the least bit interested in being whisked away into the world of self-addicted sexual slavery. I’m a free man and aim to stay that way. It’s tragic when kids get exposed to porn, but it’s pathetic when men get hooked on it. The former are victims, the latter are junkies.

So what’s my point in doing this write-up, to crow about being morally superior to the staggering numbers of men who do view porn? No. I’m not that smug, for smugness paves the way to moral failure. My initial resistance to smut was not due to any strength of my own but the result of my upbringing and perhaps the grace of God. I wrote about this because it has been brought to my attention lately that there seems to be a prevalent attitude in some quarters that all guys view porn, so we just have to deal with it. As I recall, actress Jennifer Lawrence did just that in excusing away her boyfriend’s porn habit a year or so ago. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I for one say the hell with that. Jennifer Lawrence might have low expectations for her boyfriend, but not all of us believe in reducing women to sex objects and I have nothing but contempt for an industry that specializes in perversion and ruining lives. The addicted need to be helped, the pushers need to be punished (especially those making billions of dollars selling hard-core and child porn), and the industry needs to be dismantled. We are increasingly becoming a society that justifies, glorifies, and encourages base animalistic urges instead of cultivating qualities of temperance in self-restraint, self-control, and loyalty and we've done so because we see no value in the latter qualities. As Western morals continue to devolve into merely the pursuit of absolute personal license, we will increasingly alienate our loved ones in real relationships for fantasy ones and will further the destruction of the already seriously weakened family.

However, not all is lost. Even though I can’t relate to the porn epidemic, people like Matt Fradd can. Here’s some links that can help:

http://integrityrestored.com

http://theporneffect.com

http://mattfradd.com/category/pornography/

Marriage License?

I thought someone had either died or been in a bad accident. Marie stared at her smartphone nearly speechless and looking shocked. She finally read the message:

“Don’t forget to bring your marriage license tomorrow! I can’t perform the wedding without it.”

It was from our priest, and it was 2:30pm. The wedding is at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow (Thursday, April 14).

We could not believe it. We stood in place just blown away.

Now maybe going to the local courthouse and applying for and receiving a marriage license before one is allowed to have a church wedding is standard protocol throughout the nation - I don’t know - but it is apparently the law up here in Alaska and Marie and I didn’t know it. I had assumed that with the so-called separation of church and state in the U.S. that we could have the sacramental marriage performed and then later bebop over to the courthouse to have it legalized by the state, but I was clearly wrong. Maybe I should have done my homework better, but the fact is nobody told us we had to be okayed by the civil authorities prior to walking down the isle.

I immediately called our priest and calmly told him that we did not know we had to have the license prior to the wedding. He told us to go to the State of Alaska website and download the appropriate form, then go to the county clerk in Fairbanks and talk to them. We did this, wondering just what we would accomplish since it clearly stated in the information we downloaded that it took three business days after submitting our application for the license to be approved. Less than an hour after we received the bad news we had driven the 20 plus miles and were in front of a clerk.

We told her our story and she gave us a form to explain why we should get a waver from the 3-day wait. After I filled it out she went into a back room for several minutes while she presented the form to her supervisor. She granted the waver. Within 25 minutes and $60 later all the necessary forms were completed and we walked out of there with the marriage license in addition to the other paperwork we will need to file after the wedding.

Marie and I breathed a big sigh of relief... and thanked God for answering our prayers. What a thing to be hit with last minute! After our initial chat, our priest immediately called the bishop and told him the situation. The bishop apparently told him to work with us and the state in making sure the marriage went ahead as scheduled.

I love my bishop.

However, I have a few words I’d like to say to my priest: marriage checklist. Future engaged couples will thank you for it. 

Grope With Your Eyes, Not With Your Hands

The sexual assaults that took place in Germany and Sweden during New Years Eve (Cologne) and mid-August (Stockholm) have left me much to ponder. For some time now many disturbing signs have leaked from Europe painting a picture of increasing violence from foreigners and first generation Europeans (i.e. the brothers who killed the writers/cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo) who associate much more strongly with their religious heritage than with their host countries values. It has now emerged that perhaps hundreds of women have been sexually assaulted by serially groping by large groups of men (sometimes in packs of 20-30 or more), and a handful even raped - with much of this activity being coordinated. However, the frequent silence and downplaying of these kinds of alarming events from European politicians and the media would also lead one to think that it was coordinated. Fortunately, despite the initial police report from Cologne on New Year’s Day that read "Festive Atmosphere -- Celebrations Largely Peaceful" a more accurate picture appeared to be emerging with one eye-witness reporting of "horrific scenes in the Cologne train station" and of "crying women after multiple sexual attacks in the crowd." He wrote that he had been in the middle of the throng "hand-in-hand with my girlfriend, which unfortunately didn't prevent her from being repeatedly grabbed under her dress."