Truly, for some men nothing is written… unless they write it
–Lawrence of Arabia
Nearly a century ago, people had difficulty imagining an end to the Great Depression and prosperity returning to our nation. Not many could foresee America entering into an international conflict that would ultimately result in our economic salvation. Scant few might have predicted the cornucopia of wealth that followed the end of World War 2.
Correspondingly, many Americans are concerned, bewildered, worried over the current state of socio-political affairs in The United States. People are having the same difficulty trying to figure out how all this subversive, divisive polarization will end. Racist, pseudo-religious rhetoric; archaic denial of scientific fact; unbridgeable economic disparity, cult-driven political corruption; misogyny; domestic terrorism; violence on the home-front. There exists so multifarious an array of battles to fight, on so many fronts, it seems insurmountable. Just as the Great Depression once seemed impossible to overcome.
Historically, the most horrific calamities have saved us from our own self-destructive demise. After all, the human race is its own worst enemy. But disaster brings humans together, as if the innermost instinct to survive inspires a truly cooperative spirit that’s usually hidden deep inside every individual. Obviously, we need another humongous, all-consuming tragedy to relieve us; distract us from our rigorous efforts to slowly but systematically destroy ourselves. Our monsters from the id. Whatever that tragedy may be, it will most likely rescue us from utter destruction.
World War 2 cost millions upon millions of lives to reset our planet’s off-course destination, and onto a fairer, more humane path. Sadly, we didn’t stick on that path for very long. Over a period of merely one average lifetime, the former extremist circumstances that almost ended freedom altogether, have returned… in spades. Moreover, threats of total annihilation that did not exist 80 years ago, are prominent in today’s nuclear, bio-chemical environment. The terrain on which we currently find ourselves deployed. Let us pray the next global disaster, while possibly being necessary to set things straight, won’t completely finish us as a species.
©craigrorylombardi2022
