WILL WE EVER LEARN?

     Man is supposed to have a brain. We are supposed to be able to learn from our errors and proceed in a forward manner. Yet how many times have we retreated from progress, even run backwards rather than face the truth? So here are three examples of where we are making these same retreating steps, apparently having learned nothing, nothing at all from the past! They are in order of importance according to my impressions.
    First, if anyone drove along the perimeter road yesterday afternoon and evening, there it was. A huge display of ABC incompetence and Comcast to the rescue. KNOWING where the line was for cable, the incompetents of ABC cut it anyway and there went the Internet for a large area with buildings from Somerset and Wellington involved. Oh, yay! This is the great service we are getting from this abominable contract and major misdeed. Told ya so. Warned us all so! And yet, hey, here is our future with this company. Thank you, David!
     And yet an even more important step back to the crude days of dictators but wait! We never had dictators here. In fact, our heroic presidents warned us about that, from Washington to Lincoln and in between and beyond. Our government today in DC has turned into an evil and corrupt crust of selfish and nasty and incompetent people. It is led by a man who is allegedly a criminal, a selfish and degenerate man who thinks only of himself. He is reportedly the angriest he has ever been, shouting on Twitter in his dumb capitals, hinting at more chaos, threatening a nuclear armed power and making threats that will only serve to downgrade the safety of the world and the planet itself.
     And how did we allow this? By thinking he was a joke. By thinking that he would somehow morph into a politician with our best interests at heart. That he would forget his piggish behavior. That his hatred and innate prejudice would be hidden away while he was president but hello! Take a look what we have! Now how do we get the hell out of this mess?
     And finally, we have the serious issue that ties directly into Trump and the ideas of Trumpism and the display of hatred and bias and huge regrowth or outing of semi hidden anti Semitism. Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day in Israel where life comes to a halt with sirens. Where the TV is filled with stories of sacrifice, of death, of more danger faced by the Jewish people and there is not a tear left by end of day.
     Abraham Foxman, a survivor himself, wrote eloquently how Trumpism has allowed this revival, has made it okay to hate, to threaten, to shout and in countries all over the world and he mentioned, many more than a few, this virulent ancient hatred has gone viral and gone murderous what with people being shot, old women being beaten to death, children frightened and here, in America, for the first time I am frightened, not so much for me but for my children and grandchildren, for all the people, for again, ad infinitum ad nauseum - hatred has no barriers and no end. It eats its own body up from within until there is nothing and no one left. 
     After the Red Army liberated the ghetto in what is now called Vilnius in 1944, Shub returned to find all its Jews killed by Nazi SS troops. Among the bodies strewn on the street was that of his father. A blood-soaked note in his hand, written in Yiddish, said, "If anyone sees my son, tell him to take revenge."
     Are we at this point? Again? Must we ever go backwards? Must we ever be entangled in incompetence, in corruption, in hatred, in bloodshed, in thoughts and moments and deeds of revenge as last minute acts of survival? 
      For Israel, this has been a rally cry but also a reminder - we are and will be, always, the epitome of the fighting Jewish warriors of the Bible, of soldiers fighting in the armies of the world, in defending ourselves and others against hatred and destruction.
        In Genesis G-d tells Cain that the blood of his brother cries out from the ground and we hear this reminder throughout the Bible, the calling of the blood of the killed, the murdered, the burned, the tortured, the drowned, the choked, the buried alive, the gassed, the shot and the horrors can go on - but time will tell.
     Why can we not take steps forward, permanent steps, honor each other and enough with the selfishness and greed of so many of our supposed leaders and their followers. Enough!!!