Me again.   Pontificating.   Just being grateful really.    I remember as a kid watching the 20th anniversary TV commemoration of D DAY.   It seemed like ages ago to me then.   Like ancient history.   Black and white newsreels of the beaches at Normandy.    Ancient.   

 

Today, not so much.   I realize that 20 years ago, George Herbert Walker Bush was President.   2 of my kids were teenagers.   Desert Storm was 2 years away.   Not so long ago and not so ancient.  

 

But for all intents and purposes, to probably 50% of Americans, D Day is nothing more than a colloquialism meaning “kick off”.   If that.   How shortsighted we have become.  How historically challenged.   That scares me.   A wise guy said once if you don’t know your history, you are bound to repeat it.

 

I think about that these days.   About Hitlers brown shirts and the Hitler youth and the cult of the personality.  About Mussolini and the fascisti in Italy who thought it best to govern with the central banks, transportation, and all the powerful institutions as a tidy consortium of power concentrated in the hands of a power elite.  

 

I think about the millions of lives that it cost to break free of totalitarianism only because it was allowed to take root.   And how quickly it spread…….and how horrific the consequences.    I didn’t think about that when I was 8 years old.   I just watched some old ancient newsreels on television and wondered what all the fuss was about.   

 

Now I know.    God don’t let us go down that road again.    Please.