Here We Go Again!

Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it – George Santayana

Is war also human nature? Santayana also said, "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

Given our times and the current state of our governing bodies, I offer, in substantiation of Santayana's prescience, two quotes, taken out of context because the context is immaterial, but eerily foreshadowing, despite the book being first published in 1985, thirty-eight years ago. The book is War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk, the second part of a two-volume  fictional tome about WWII and its effects on a single family. Wouk also wrote The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar among others.

I only ask that you think about these two statements as they relate to today:

The first is from a memory of the great expenditure of wealth and life that it took to end WWII.

"If the hope is not in the coming of the Prince of Peace, it has to be that in their hearts most people, even the most fanatical and boneheaded Marxists, even the craziest nationalists and revolutionaries, love their children and don't want to see them burn up. There is no politician imbecile enough, surely, to want a nuclear (war). The future now seems to depend upon that grim assumption. Either war is finished, or we are."

The second is from the fictional protagonist's musings about the civilian deaths in the Dresden fire bombings.

"… but nobody made the Germans follow Hitler. He wasn't a legitimate ruler. He was a man with a mouth, and they liked what he said. They got behind him, and they let loose a firestorm that's sucking all the decent instincts out of human society. Hitler gloried in savagery, he proclaimed it as his battle cry, and the Germans shouted Seig Heil! They still go on laying down their misguided lives for him, and the lives of their unfortunate families."

Maybe Santayana was right. I surely hope not. Yet, we seem to be sliding, once again, into the abyss.

Think about it!