1816 - 2026- ?????

  The year 1816 was known in history as the year without a summer. For approximately 16 to 18 months, perhaps more, there was no summer. There was only bitter cold and massive rainfall, so much so that crops were ruined all over the world and thousands died of starvation, of bitter cold with a gross lack of shelter and the result was violence as voices were calling out that it was the end of the world, certainly as it was known at that point.

The world itself was in political turmoil and fighting and refighting the French Revolution in all its manifestations, be it the remnants of the radical Republicans or the dyed in the wool Monarchists.    Everyone and everybody were to blame yet blame could not be placed securely on the shoulders of anyone in particular nor any country independent of all others. Even then countries in the world had threads of theirs interwoven with the threads of others yet those in charge could not or more importantly would not see their way through these masses of knots. Just as we cannot see through them today.

The ways of the nations of the world can be likened to the game of whack a mole where a winner seeks to win by hitting moles on the head and driving them back down. But nothing changes. And nothing is won as there is no permanent solution or strategy to be used. Nor can there be any collaboration with other players of other whack-a mole sets because, there is no connection to each other. and hence the wacking goes on, no permanent strategy without any definitive winning path to be played, again and again only to whack with no outcome of any lasting importance.

During the years surrounding 1816 we had class warfare of deep chasms separating the various classes of society. The poor were extremely so and struggled not only day to day, but hour by hour to survive. They fought and robbed and stole and sold from others just like them. That was the way to survive the brutality of their survival, and was in turn, held to be the cause of that non-ending winter of the strange weather phenomena. Month after month after month after month

In their ignorance, willing and not, they could not relate nor find the connection between an eruption of a volcano on the other side of the world to the weirdness of their weather and the massive crop failures. No, there were closer causes to be found and/or to be manufactured as the Uber wealthy maintained their cruel and indifferent world with little evidence of any struggle of survival.

And as usual there was that middle class in constant struggle to maintain their station in life. Maintaining their hard-won success in the world and the constant attack and battlement as they too lived in the world fraught with danger. Other than the rare few wishing to help and who were able to help, there was no help. The combat between the classes, the economic strata of society were ever ongoing.

Today names of the characters are changed, but that makes for nothing of any value or import. Today's world contains the same willfully ignorant and blind to the realities of life for others, even as so many wallow in their ill-gotten gains. A society.  once not so long ago on a correct path leading to a leavening of society, to a dulling of the sharpness of the differences, to a proper sharing of the bounties of the Earth. Now, once again it has lost its way. The results are quite similar and this jungle of eat or be eaten continues with hopes dimming. No, we can never see through the knots of own times. Nor to untangle them and formulate them into beneficial lines and possibilities.  

The leaders then and the same ilk of pseudo leaders alive today continue to tread hopelessly on in the same mud-soaked paths of life with no exit and a worsening of the road ahead. Take a piece of paper and make a chart writing in the leaders of the past and the leaders of today and the upcoming leaders of tomorrow and see if you can distinguish between them. Find a leader who has principles and will stick to those principles rather than break them up in the name of maintenance of power and the amassing of wealth, whatever currency of the day there be. 

Principles of goodness, of welcome, of sharing. ethics of eternal truth along with reasonable plans and to create, recreate, a society meant to live and benefit of and for all. A society which sets aside the violence and the hate and allows the air to clear and summer to break through those dark clouds.

Yesterday

Today

Tomorrow

There have been such attempts. Some even getting closer to it, to the idea of it than others We must try again and again until we succeed. Benevolently. Justly.

Yes, some supposedly socialistic thoughts, but without the false ones that are rife today in the world. Those supporting the socialists today are of the wrong vein, the so wrong temperament with the worst of consequences awaiting if we fall into the recurring errors of history.

We need those of clear thinking, of more noble ethics, of leaders who put the nation first before their own selfish desires.

We can do this.

We must do this.