This is the second person I respect who has suggested that that are similarities between the world now and 1939:
http://forum.dansimmons.com/ubbthreads/ ... Post155894
I've never been naive enough to believe that history actually repeats itself. As someone who's read more history than anything else since I was 7 years old, I know that there are always new variables, unique circumstances, and --perhaps most important -- unique individuals, what the leftist press likes to call"World Historical Figures" as if they're generated by some chronosynclastic machine at regular intervals -- which make every age, every generation, every glimmer of human progress, and every reversion to the darker aspects of the Dark Ages unique which have predominated human history and pre-history.
Nonetheless, for the last two or three years I've had a general pall hanging over my spirit. I finally realized it was because both logically and subconsciously, the flood of daily news from both the U.S. and around the world made me feel more and more as if I -- we, all of us -- were living in 1939 and could do nothing about what was coming our way.
As I say, I don't see history as "repeating itself" in any sort of circular way, but I do see important eras and trends in history -- glimmers of real human freedom as represented by American philosophes and American revolution fighters and the earliest French Revolution intellectuals in the late 1700's, the rise of totalitarianism as an efficient and preferred-by-nations'-populations in the 1930's, eras of total chaos as so often experienced in the local warlord Europe circa 900 A.D. to the 1500's, and so forth -- more as unpredictable high and low tides in the sea that washes up on the shores of all our lives and national histories.
I no longer feel that America, American leaders, and the American people -- all of us -- are living blithely in the isolationist U.S.A. of 1939, despite the headlines in my local and Denver papers being "Local Marathon Runner Runs 15 Marathons in 15 Days" and the systematic slaughter of hundreds of captured Iraqi soldiers by Sunni uber-fanatics overrunning Iraq in two weeks as the German armored divisions overran France in 1940, is to be found on page 17B. And while the hopeful AOL headline announces "Secretary Kerry begins serious attempt to cooperate with Iran over Iraq crisis."
The tide of totalitarianism -- primarily Jihadist-sharia-law totalitarianism, more fanatical and less reasoning than the Japanese imperial bushido insanity of the 1920's and '30's and 40's -- is on the rise everywhere. The machine-gunnings of 80 or so American POWs captured by the German Army, part of the Nazi war machine, were so few and far between that they led to a "take no prisoners" war cry in the advancing Allied armies.
Yet we accept these pre-medieval barbarisms -- public decapitations, the hanging of women for dressing improperly, the execution verdict of a pregnant woman with another child at home because she won't renounce her Christianity, the attacks on Christians and their ancient churches throughout the Islamic world, the kidnapping and slave-sale of young girls who only wanted a bit of education, the carefully video and photographically recorded and reported (by the killers) slaughter of unarmed POWs, the fall of the Black Flag Curtain of al Qaeda, Taliban, Boko Harem and other Islamist fascist groups over region after region, nation after nation -- and we watch our sports programs, stay deeply involved with "Dancing With the Stars", talk about unreal reality programs about hillbillies over the watercooler at work, and generally ignore the rise of barbarism and totalitarianism around the world that's consuming entire societies like the 2004 Thai-Indonesian tsunami (shown in the extraordinary movie "The Impossible") that killed and maimed so many thousands of people and swept away hundreds of villages and resorts along entire coastlines.
We rushed military and NGO aid to the help of the tsunami victims within days . . . within hours. We're doing NOTHING to help the victims of the totalitarian tsunami washing over Crimea, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, the South China Sea, Lebanon, Nigeria, Kenya, and scores of other nations and regions.
I don't feel in my gut and heart that we're living in 1939 America any longer. I feel that it's late-November or early-December of 1941 America and we celebrate our lucky isolationism and focus on our entertainment, flagpole sitters, college students stuffing themselves into phonebooths and eating goldfish, on Kim Kardashian, on "Fucking Around with the Stars", and the lead headline fact that some guy ran 15 marathons 15 days and that President Obama has executed another "executive order" banning the last vestiges of personal opinion troubled by LGBT advances..
Since I refuse to be the Prophet of Doom -- or perhaps because I once played that role with my novel FLASHBACK which earned me good reviews from actual reviewers but one- or zero-star reviews by the hundreds on our democractic (small and large "d") Amazon review space -- along with obscene personal attacks, literal death threats, and my second official fatwa from a British imam -- I'll just say to you here that I may soon be commenting much less on the diahrretic rush of near-insane domestic and international news pouring from every media orifice.
In the late 1930's, the political outcast Winston Churchill had to decide whether his beloved England (not the "United Kingdom" but his England with its king then queen and worldwide empire)-- had gone insane with its constant and formal policy of appeasement toward Hitler, Mussolini, and other totalitarian regimes, or whether he, Churchill, in resisting it all while in the political wilderness, had remained perhaps the Last Sane Englishman. Churchhill had the strength -- or ego -- of never doubting his own sanity or political positions.
I may not have his (often misplaced) sense-of-self and confidence in his nation and its people (although I've had the latter until very, very recently), so I'll probably choose silence in preference to anger that could too easily turn into rants.
Good luck to all of us. If you're a person of faith who can pray for this rising world-tide of ever-increasing barbarism and totalitarianism to recede on its own or through some divine intervention, please say those prayers.
Otherwise -- given the leadership and media consensus we currently have in this country -- (and with apologies to jobiska, my wife, and all others who can't stand such language) -- I believe that we are well and truly fucked. And, most tragically, that we currently deserve to be.
Sincerely,
Dan
Edited by Dan Simmons (06/17/14 09:53 AM)
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will probably rise appreciably and it will hurt. However, after a painful period, I think they will then fall back down to moderate levels.