Is history cyclical? [View All]

[BigMcLargehuge]

Is history cyclical?

Here I am sitting in my Brother’s kitchen looking over the book he offered me as a belated birthday present, “Dr. Seuss Goes to War” featuring a huindred or so cartoons from his stint as an editorial cartoonist during the 1940’s. As I read through each one it becomes more and more clear that several, if not half, of those cartoons apply directly to the state of the Union circa 2003.





Then,

Last night I’m listening to Mike Malloy rail against showing the dead bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein and PAM. He bumpers the segment with a snippet of “The Bravery of Being out of Range” from Roger Waters 1991 album Amused to Death.



I have this CD downstairs. I haven’t listened to it in 10 years. I get it, rip it to my iMac, start listening while I reread the Seuss book.

“Crikey” I say “This is all so applicable...”

So what’s next? If history is cyclical what era can we expect to rear its head from this four year stretch of strife and worry? A return to the crazed conformity and consumerism of the 50s? A depression and massive internal strife a-la the 30’s? The widespread unreast of the 60’s? Or do we go all the way back to 1916, 1861, 1812, 1776, The French Revolution, The Crusades, The Fall of Rome, Greece, Egypt?

I guess I’m just tired, and maybe a little pessimistic (which is my nature anyway), but things seem to be sliding so fast now.... Our status among the other citizens of the world is diminised due to our beligerence, our arrogance, and our ignorance. Our economy continues to spiral towards the pipe end of the toilet. The ransk of the unemployed swell a little more every week.

People are getting desperate, frustrated, and angry. I know I am...

So where do we go? How do we pull the US back from the brink? Surely we can’t put all our eggs in the 2004 election basket, because the other guys have already proven they can and will circumvent the will of the people to retain their hold on power.... Can we work from the bottom up, enter and win local elections, then state, then federal? Will it make a difference? Is there enough time, or have we frittered away what little reaction time we had? I suppose the only other option is bottles, rocks, and molotov coctails in the streets, but I hope not.

What do we do? We’ve let them set the stage and now we have to play, but who has the script?

Okay, my self indulgent rant ends here. I’m just going to listen to Amused to Death and stew for a while. Who knows, maybe I’ll come up with an answer.