Living under the Trump / Putin shadow for the past five years has changed my perception of the geometry of history, if indeed, there is one. I used to think, in broad terms, of a bumpy, irregular but nevertheless linear progression. It now seems more cyclic.
An argument could be made to demonstrate both progress and regression. For every act of higher consciousness there is a counterweight of democracy’s failure. Unarticulated and misunderstood fear of accelerated change has led to angry dislocations. Those amorphous grievances have found a home in mindless mobs and incipient fascism, American style.
If the Repugnants had their way we might revert to 1912 when Senators were elected by State legislators, there was no federal income tax nor did women have the vote. The party of suppression and obstruction could become the party of unraveling.
Yet Russian
truculence and the carnage in Ukraine have been met by universal outrage.
Implicit in this condemnation is the sense that we have moved on, that nations
just don’t behave like that anymore. Yet they do.
Furthermore, many
of us, having lived through the insanity of Hitler and Stalin, wonder if this aggression
is not a reenactment of the devastating war we witnessed eighty years ago.
History, like barbequed beef, repeats itself.
Advances in
technology are indisputable even if their consequences are barely understood.
The geometry in that area is certainly onward ever upward.
However, given
the fragility of our planet with deranged actors and unthinkable weaponry, I am
thrown out the straight vertical into the morass of a squishy, monstrous circle
leading back to ancient territorial destruction.
I would like to
believe Trump's demagoguery and Putin’s bellicosity might be the last gasps of
inhumanity but I need more convincing. My jury is deadlocked.
As a kid we used
to watch movies with no regard for when they started. Realtime history seems to be on
that same continuous loop. Enter at any point and walk out when it gets to feel
familiar.
A friend of mine who was born in 1965 ask if she should be worried by Putin's nuclear saber rattling. I said that we should have always been worried but that, as a 10 year old in 1962, the Cuban Missle Crisis seemed scarier to me. As you so perfectly point out, it is all about perspective. Turn off the news and all is well. Pay attention to everything that is going on and it has always been bad for someone. Another great post. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Stephanie. Whatever the shape of history may be the membrane appears to be more permeable and our hold more fragile.
ReplyDeleteAnother insightful Norm’s Norms.
ReplyDeleteThank you, dear friend.
DeleteIt seems that their unconscionable acts happen because they have managed or muzzled social media.
ReplyDelete