THE BAEDEKER BLITZ

A hope for 2026

Here at the end of an awful year, I’m looking for new ways to be in the world when many of you, like me, see everything you care about being destroyed, systematically, and yet for no great reason. The Kennedy Center, The Center for Disease Control, the long slow destruction of the post office (DeJoy), the Smithsonian as it stands, queer flags, the legal system, making universities like mine capitulate to…what?, the EPA, science, etc. He went for everything I love, through 2025, one thing after another. When I get mugged (twice), I always think it’s super personal in the moment until I realize it wasn’t, but let’s face it, the current biz makes it far more personal. He wants me to despair.

In September I was walking around southern England, a cheaty-cheat walk from Dover to Canterbury, to see the holy blissful martyr, and along the way, I learned about a hideous Nazi campaign on England, and it all sounded super-familiar.

In 1942, after the RAF bombed Lübeck, the Nazis launched retaliatory raids on English cities that had high cultural value but relatively low military value. They reportedly used the Baedeker travel guides (popular German guidebooks that rated cities with stars for historical and architectural importance) to pick targets. Cities with three stars—like Exeter, Bath, York, Norwich, and Canterbury—were hit.

The target list was chosen arbitrarily from the distinguished tourist guidebook that everybody knew back then (the Germans are always best with guidebooks even today) — and some cities were bombed mainly because they were “pretty,” not because they were militarily important.

These raids didn’t make much military sense compared to earlier bombing campaigns. The goal was psychological and cultural destruction: damaging cathedrals, medieval streets, and historic centers. Some cities had very little industry, but were still heavily bombed because of their heritage. So unlike most bombing campaigns in WWII, the Baedeker Blitz was, in part, a war against history and identity, not factories or ports.

My friends, we are under attack by his Baedeker Blitz. The guy wants us to despair because he has destroyed everything we care about. And I won’t lie—it hurt and hurt and I have wanted to make people hurt, too. Michelle Obama says when they go low, we go—I don’t care. I was born under the sign of ACT UP and Queer Nation, under the sign of Squeaky Wheel. I am not going to go high when there’s so much low.

Many of my friends and colleagues know that I apologize a lot, too often. I am not sorry right now.

There was, during the war, a group called “St Paul’s Watch”, that stood to protect St Paul’s Cathedral. There were many hideous anti-propaganda doctored photos of St Paul’s being demolished. The St. Paul’s Watch pushed back.

We are at war. That’s how I’m thinking, and have been for a couple of years. I want to preserve everything I love about the United States, and I can’t preserve it all myself, but I intend to save what I can. Starting with the post office. How silly, right? You don’t have to love the post office. But what do you love? Public radio? The CDC? The beautiful African American Museum of History? If you’re like me, I ask you, for the new year 2026, to pick a public cultural/functional/municipal/artful thing you love, and plan to help restore it after our own Baedeker Blitz. Let’s call ourselves the St. Paul’s Watch.

To me, my St. Paul’s Watch! Tell me what you want to restore after the hideousness!