We Are Threatened By A Criminal Enterprise

What Are We Going To Do About It?

The past and the future do not exist. There is only the now. This moment… and that moment is already gone… You cannot make anything great again, you can only make a better future than there was in the past and that there is in the now we are living by choosing a different path.

There has been since it occurred an attempt to 1984 our experience of the insurrection at the US Capital on January 6, 2021. There are those who tell us that we did not see and hear what we saw and heard. The actions of that day were an illegal, immoral, and vicious attack on American democracy. NO amount of sane-washing or obfuscating reconstruction can change the video the world saw or the witness testimonies of those who were threatened and viciously attacked. It was not a “normal tourist day” attended by peaceful patriots as some of the most outlandish co-conspirators claim. It was a violent and destructive assault on our capital to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Full stop.

There is a saying that winners write history. But in truth, the past cannot be rewritten. We can to a lesser degree, however, predict the future with past as prologue. Efforts to ‘rewrite history’ are the futile attempts usually by apologists and those who made heinous mistakes to cover their tracks and justify if not erase the record of their crimes and transgressions. Successful doers of good deeds never ask or attempt to rewrite the past except to reflect on how much more or how much better they could have done.

One of my favorite idioms (and for those who follow me oft repeated) is a quote from the philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The reasons to study history, American and world history, are not to become historians or remember the significance or incidence of dates, but to avoid the damning self-inflicted condemnation of repeating poorly considered past actions of others, perhaps particularly the horrors of war and conflict. Just as certainly, there are inspirational good and great historical moments to recall and emulate as we contemplate our current situations and chart the courses of our futures.

So, the question we must all ask ourselves, given the grievous days we are now living and the clear witness that is history, is what do we choose to do about it? Will you fall into compliance? Will you collaborate hoping to escape the fates of others? Will you join the forces of fascism and give in to darker angels? Will you run? Try to hide? Try to act like you don’t see the evil and cruelty hoping it will somehow go away without your involvement? Or will you fight for democracy and freedom perhaps requiring the last full measure of your devotion to save it as so many heroes did so that we could live in America today?

As Gandalf tells Frodo in the saga The Lord of the Rings:

Frodo: I wish none of this had ever happened.

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

Choose wisely…