I suppose it’s a reflection of how I was raised but that is how I see all war. Old men sending young men out to sacrifice for war games.
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There’s a subtlety I’m missing and I apologize for it. I was raised at the end of the cold war, communism the butt of teenage comedy movies, the soviet’s hardly a threat and the motions towards peace and “tear down that wall” were all certainties.
I was not a fan of Reagan even as a teenager but he knew how to give a rousing speech and I liked that about him.
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I’m 48 years old, raised on a diet of John Hughes movies in the 1980s. Very USA-centric, anything East of East Germany was a strange mystery and spooky but mostly the stuff of silly spy movies and vague threats of bombs falling or NORAD being hacked.
My family was woman-centric for several generations, more about survival and trying to grab hold of the American dream as best as possible in a pink collar way than being concerned about the concerns of far off nations with their own struggles.
The assumption I was raised with is: Everybody wants basically the same thing around the world: A home, a stable family, a sense of security and freedom to pursue hobbies and earn a basic living in a neighborhood that’s stable.
Was that true? I don’t know. – just how I was raised to think.
The concerns of the wealthy, the royalty, the government officials — these were all of classes far removed from our own, the stuff of tabloid magazines and gossip and hardly a reality we had to face.
Keep your nose down, do what needs to be done, but complain if it’s not right also. That’s about it.
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The neighbor who won’t keep their pit bulls on a leash that escapes and runs over to try and bite the kids is more of a threat to survival than anything, whereas a Hitler or a Japanese warlord the stuff of history books and blown up into epic tales far removed from daily reality.
In these times, now I’m seeing the validity of paying attention to the actions of kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers.
But I was blissfully able to ignore it until about 5 years ago.
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I know the US Constitution is strong, even as the three branches of govt attempt to align in a unitary conservative coalition. [which isn’t conservative but radical yet still calls itself such].
What I saw in Sanders was not a Red Scare but an FDR, completely in line with American history.
Even Trump, as annoying as he is, is basically a Whig, totally in the standard American history, although I know where that led.
So, I never had to go outside of the USA to find predictions of the future really.
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