Is History Repeating … Again?

Is History Repeating … Again?

Deja Vu all over again.

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Just before sitting down to write this piece, I checked the news, as I always do.  As usual, it was distressing and depressing.

I learned that the US stock market had plunged again.  This time by as much as 500 points before it closed at 391 points down.  I learned that the global markets closed down by 4%.  And I heard the recently oft repeated refrain that the US is on the slippery slope toward another recession -- making this a so-called double dip recession. Sadly, I am convinced that much of today’s global population hasn’t a clue as to just how serious and just how dangerous a period in world history we are currently experiencing.

I was born into a world still reeling from the Great Depression.  I joined the human race just before the Second World War. 

The so-called experts say the first five years of a child’s life are the formative years.  What he sees, hears, and experiences will determine, for better or for worse, how he lives his life. 

My generation’s internal wiring was influenced by a world under tremendous stress.  Some say it was a time of unequal distress for the inhabitants of the planet.

Those early experiences lead us to compare every world crisis or pseudo-crisis with the REAL world wide crisis we were born into and, for all intents and purposes, grew-up in.

So.  Having said all the above, allow me to assess where we are today -- as seen through my eyes. 

I’m a plain ole country boy with average intelligence and a hell of a lot of experience earned in the school of hard knocks.  Many of those “hard knocks” were self-imposed as a result of my own stupidity.  But – I learned and, for the most part, I retained the knowledge gained from those errors in judgment.

With those bona fides behind me … here we go.

I am very afraid we are on the cusp of a world war more destructive than any this earth has ever experienced.

Look around you.  The people of the planet are near panic mode.   Their countries and governments are crashing around them, their money is quickly becoming worthless, the fortunes many have worked and accumulated, or inherited from the sweat of their ancestors, is quickly draining away. 

There are wars and rumors of wars all over the planet.  The worldwide anxiety level is palpable.

My own country, the United States, is involved in three wars as I write.  America’s military is stretched to very near her military limits.  Our combat forces are fatigued and war weary.  But there is no end in sight. 

Serving as the global police department has been a huge drain on America’s treasury and our military. 

As America becomes tired, those predator nations from whom America has protected so much of the world since WW-II, are, even now, evaluating their chances for hegemony in various regions of the globe.  The Middle East, as usual, is especially vulnerable to a concentrated military attack by a well armed, disciplined rogue nation with no qualms about slaughtering millions in an attempt to enlarges their land area, their influence on world politics, and their domination of the region – not to mention control of the world’s supply of oil and it’s transit of the sea lanes in the Middle East, the Red Sea area, and the Indian Ocean. 

Someone one once observed, “ … When everything is going to hell in a hand basket, there seems always to be someone who steps forward with all the answers.”  The observer continued:  “Quite often that person turns out to be insane.”  

The observer paraphrased above was spot-on.  We saw it happen in Germany, in the 1930’s, and the result was the greatest war the world had ever seen costing millions upon millions their lives before the German homeland was absolutely destroyed by Allied Forces.

The point?  The world is rapidly digressing to the same stage of anxiety and out and out fear in which the world of the 1930’s spawned the insane leader mentioned above.

I’m a realist … neither an optimist nor a pessimist.  I try very hard to see things as they really are and not as I wish them to be. And, in my opinion, the war clouds are already gathering over the eastern horizon. 

When this war comes it will necessarily involve, to one extent or the other, all the nations of the earth.  And it will be following the cycle of war, peace, prosperity, financial collapse, and war again.  Granted – it is a manmade cycle, but it is an extant cycle, nevertheless.

If one observes current world events through the lens of history, it is clear the world is in that stage, which historically leads to war.

Realists are rarely surprised.  Consider this commentary a “heads-up” from a realist. 

J. D. Longstreet