Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748 – 1825), The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, 1812, oil on canvas, 203.9 x 125.1 cm (80 1/4 x 49 1/4 in.), National Gallery, Washington, D.C. (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)
You know that thing about us all being
six degrees – or fewer – of separation in social connections from everyone else in the world? Well, the other day I had another thought along those lines. But one that shows us all how close we are in human history to each other. The dawning came to me as I thought about how close we are to repeating history these days, with fascist leaders all over the world gaining in power, and wars erupting in a manner that is dangerously close to setting off that World War III that many of us no doubt have feared all of our lives.
Yes, with the U.S. election around the corner, and with the possibility that an unbalanced leader not unlike the worst we have seen this century being voted in again, I began pondering how it was that we could repeat history so easily with so many unthinkable examples we seem to be following without thought to the consequences.
That got me thinking about how, in fact, we think that with so soon now 80 years since the closing of the last World War, it seemed a long time. A time long enough to allow us to forget. But it also felt like sufficient time to allow us to learn, develop, and change as the human race.
So that got me thinking about time, human time, and how far ago we really are from the Holocaust and the second World War, or even the first. Then bang. I suddenly began thinking about it, and then doing the research, and I realized that when I was born in 1957, there were still a handful of veterans alive from the American Civil War in the 1860s. And add to those veterans a whole lot of other people who lived during that time.
That is when I jumped to the next natural step, thinking about my father, born in 1925, and how many such veterans or people from other periods of history were alive when he was born. And then, before I even got to the end of that thought, I jumped to his father, my grandfather, Carey Bradford Spurgeon, who fought in World War I – among other places, in Vimy Ridge, and was born in 1892.
I got to researching that, and thinking about the days I sat on his knee in my childhood as he showed me his little red heart collection like those Russian dolls that fit inside one another, these little hearts containing other hearts. I think they were made of ivory, brought back from his many visits to the country where he was born, India, as the son of a missionary.
American Civil War
And I looked it up and I found that throughout his childhood, there were living veterans of the Napoleonic wars. People who fought under Napoleon – for whom this leader was not just an historical figure, but a person they served. Right up to the 20th century, they lived. In fact, there were actually people alive when my grandfather was born who had lived through the French Revolution! But the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, was the one that really struck me in terms of war.
Yes, my very own grandfather, who lived in our own family home, was born into a world where the values, the memory, the mindset that brought about all those historic moments going back more than two centuries now were very much imprinted and alive in their minds and spirits. I repeat, I knew a man who lived at a time when people lived that experienced the French Revolution!
So how, I ask, can you really expect that the human nature that created Fascism, Nazism, the Holocaust, has had enough time to become something radically different in just 80 years? If we could do that – and all the other horrors that the last two and a half centuries have created – all within the crystal clear collective memory of only me, my Dad and my grandfather and the people alive during his day, how the hell can anyone think that it cannot happen again? Or do something far worse, as humanity has managed to do as we move along through history?
The passage of time is an illusion when it comes to any thought of distancing ourselves from our past. With all the writing on the wall, please, study history, be aware: Understand, U.S. voters, the signs that are all around us. Do not vote for Donald Trump. Even if you hate the democrats.
