“Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.”
If ever Americans need to pay attention to those words by philosopher/essayist George Santayana and to make good use of what they’re telling us, now is the time.
The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States of America has caused us, as a people, to turn a crucial corner. The extremists’ reaction to the election – violence in the streets, academia and the halls of government – portend times of great upheaval with a result that could, realistically, bring down not only the Trump presidency (which they want) but the country itself (which most of them don’t want.)
Anyone who thinks removing Trump from the White House would return us to “normalcy” is smoking something more powerful than the currently popular marijuana – medicinal or otherwise.
The words of Santayana didn’t mean much to me when I was young and naive. I had the idealistic belief that people would know what had happened and be smart enough to avoid repeating mistakes.
Hah! It didn’t take long, as I moved through life, for me to realize my initial belief was totally wrong. Human beings are selfish and demanding, egotistic and duplicitous, power-mad and controlling and, too often, ignorant.
Even those who are essentially good people still act out with elements of those negatives, which means that we must always be on guard as to the intent and possible consequences of what people do and don’t do.
If we don’t keep an eye on what is going on around us, we will fall victim to the consequences Santayana referred to: repeating the negatives of the past.
The protesters against Donald Trump today are using that implicit threat every time they accuse him of being “another Hitler.”
It’s so easy to say, and it gets them the media attention they want. But it’s clear they have no idea who Hitler really was, what he really did and what he intended for Europe and the people of the world if he hadn’t been defeated.
Those people are ill-educated and uneducated fools who are playing with political fire and threatening the future of all of us.
In going through some family books, I came across a volume written by H.G. Wells in 1921. Its title: “The Salvaging of Civilization – The Probable Future of Mankind.”
That sounded intriguing and clearly was not one of Wells’ science-fiction volumes.
I have not finished reading it yet, but I can see H.G. and I don’t agree on much of the political philosophy – he’s an outright socialist and totally in favor of a world government – but the picture painted in his opening paragraphs is haunting. It is not filled with optimism and reflects much of what we are enduring today, 96 years later.
“We’re in one of those phases of experience which become cardinal in history. A series of immense and tragic events have shattered the self-complacency and challenged the will and intelligence of mankind. That easy general forward movement of human affairs, which for several generations had seemed to justify the persuasion of a necessary and invincible progress, progress toward greater powers, greater happiness, and a continual enlargement of life, has been checked violently and perhaps arrested altogether.
“The spectacular catastrophe of the great war has revealed an accumulation of destructive forces in our outwardly prosperous society, of which few of us has dreamt; and it has also revealed a profound incapacity to deal with and restrain these forces.”
H.G. Wells then spoke of the unrest and indecision both in Europe and in America. He wondered if the cycle of prosperity and progress had closed and asked was all that just good luck. He wondered what the current staggering and blundering, the hatreds and mischievous adventures would bring.
Sound familiar?
Then he asked: “Is the world in the opening of long centuries of confusion and disaster such as ended the Western Roman Empire in Europe or the Han prosperity in China? And, if so, will the debacle extend to America? Or is the American (and Pacific?) system still sufficiently removed and still sufficiently autonomous to maintain a progressive movement of its own if the Old World collapses?”
With the growing instability in this country; the ongoing threats in the East involving China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines; the Brexit movement in Europe; the changes in Russia; and, of course, the threat of militant Islam across the Middle East and the world, one wonders where the other shoe will drop and what it will mean for the future of all of us.
Throughout the book, Wells rails against war and greed and envy and education and private enterprise and communism and more.
“The world is filled with hate and aggression.” He describes it as “this wholly destructive conflict between the property manipulator and the communist fanatic which is now rapidly wrecking our world.
“The present system, unless it can develop a better intelligence and a better heart, is manifestly destined to foster fresh wars and to continue wasting what is left of the substance of mankind, until absolute social disaster overtakes us all.”
I don’t know about you, but all that is a little too accurate for comfort.
In 1933, H.G. Wells predicted in “The Shape of Things to Come,” that World War II would start in January 1940. He was close. That war broke out in September 1939, the fulfillment of his warnings about the affairs of man and politics.
In the preface to the 1941 edition of his “The War in the Air,” he stated that his epitaph should be:
“I told you so. You damned fools.”
He was right again.
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