When History Repeats Itself

Many of us find it difficult, or at least painful, to align repeated events of history into patterns. If we were more vigilant of those reoccurrences, perhaps there would be fewer wars and other horrific events. That’s why history needs to continue being taught in schools, the good, the bad, and the ugly of it.

For the past several years, we have witnessed political shenanigans of colossal import, due to their danger, despite the fact that many American citizens enjoyed being blissfully unaware ( or perhaps gleefully cognizant) of the dangerous paths democracy was taking downhill to what might too easily have become a point of no return.

The worst excesses of the Fascist and Nazi regimes in Europe occurred with almost incredible savagery less than a century ago, but far too many among us in The United States and other nations have either forgotten those rather large pockets of horror and outrage against fellow beings, or they have otherwise devolved into a haze of imagined privilege at any cost. Such blind judgment would have welcomed back Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin as guest speakers for new revelations from the orange man in the White House.

There would be standing ovations by those whose privilege and sense of merited power know almost no limits based upon their skewed judgment of any people who are not their political clones in a world where wealth and privilege have become replacements for fairness in voting and for general honesty in a political party in which only loyalty to its “Furer” matters. It might actually have become some huge club, where “winning” is the only thing that matters, regardless of the nation’s peril while sinking into an atmosphere where The Constitution has been replaced by a smirk at what justice used to mean.  JB

About John

About John John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes. Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018 View all posts by John →
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