Are you having feelings of deja vu? Are these feelings coming more often? Are you sure you have heard those words, seen that behavior before? Are you worried? Yes? No? If yes, join the rest of us and if not, perhaps you need to read some more, listen to the news some more, peruse some history books a bit more. The echoes of the past are growing louder and louder, drowning out the hope for the future.
Humanity has been warned before. Time and again we have been told that if we do not study history we will be doomed to repeat it, with all its blood and gore. But somehow these words have fallen on mostly deaf ears and that is obvious in a quick scan of the world today.
Hatred is growing apace, one of the most successful crops of the year. Freedom, political, religious, whatever, is fading away as we speak, as the gains of the fall of the Soviet Union, the Spring in Eastern Europe, all fade into a cold and harsh Fall and we are left wondering what the Winter will bring.
Corbyn, a hate filled anti Semitic nasty person calls May a "stupid woman". Perhaps mild seeming, but in England, a bastion of the polite and the understatement? Uh uh. Things are coming unglued there quickly and the forces on the rise are not friendly. France is burning and the cobblestones are on flight again. Hungary, Poland, Russia, Philippines, and so many more, are reverting to extreme right wing memes and tropes, leaving the gains behind.
And here, in our homeland, well, we have a lunatic for a president. We have moral cowards as members of Congress, people now beginning to realize that no, Trump is not the man they have made him out to be, and no, he will not keep his promises - thank the Lord on that! - and he reneges whenever it suits him. He is not "smocking" hot!
Just as he huddles in a sulking heap in his living quarters, he wishes to turn our country into a replica of that. Shut down the borders and bring in no new ideas, no fresh blood. Cut off contact with other countries. Go it alone, no matter how harmful it is. Trash the economy, so badly, that we are now looking at another Great Recession, and I, for one, believe we are in it already. Just check your brokerage and retirement accounts and their balances.
And yet, there are branches and sprigs of hope out there. Two little girls were excited beyond words when they met their hero, Michelle Obama. These are hopefully two little people who will grow up into big people who will change the world for the better. We have those determined people who will fight tooth and nail to right the country, the world and they are out there still, not lessening after the election but actively planning the next campaign and the years in between. There are people who will fight the rise of the movement to deny voting rights to so many and how shameful is that, that we have to do this all over again!!
Have we learned nothing from history? Have we not learned that we need to be strong and wise, decent and compassionate, open to the world, yet closed to hatred and treason, greed and corruption. It just seems that every time we make or take a step forward, we slide back two, at least in today's world and we are hanging over a bottomless abyss of hatred, greed, stupidity and existential threat as the world devolves around us, literally, in physical disarray, the result of us and the rest of the world, mistreating our environment.
Listen to the echoes of the past. Hear them, before we become a truly dying and hopeless planet, left for future planetary explorers who will wonder what happened. Wonder if they will pick out the reign of Trump as the last straw? Ya' think!
Hear the words of Maya Angelou and think about them in the context of current history.
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."
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