“I’m sure there were Jews in Germany in the 30s who never thought things would get as bad as they did. Even if there were warning signs, they reasoned it would be OK. They had jobs, and businesses, and their families. How bad could it be? Well, history shows us that very bad things can happen and do happen. The cultural revolution in China is another example.
The longer I’ve lived, the more I realize that each and every blessing you have in life must be cherished, because you never know how long these blessings will be with you, or how long you will be here.”
My family history backs up the fleeting nature of good times and stability. My paternal grandfather was born in Russia (now part of Ukraine) in 1901. He told me that when he was 12, there was a great celebration across the nation (11 time zones, 1/6 of the land area of the world) for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty. He said that at that time, HIS grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather could not have remembered a time without the Czar - that for all practical purposes, the Czar was forever. Well, 5 years later the Romanov Dynasty was no more, and a year after that the Czar and his whole family were murdered and thrown down a well. So much for “forever.”
With my grandfather’s family, the fall wasn’t quite so dramatic - but it was a fall nonetheless. My great grandfather was a fairly wealthy man. He worked his fingers to the bone to own a water delivery business employing about 50 people, and built - with his own labor and that of his sons - 14 or 15 houses that he rented out. My grandfather’s youngest brother, who got out of Ukraine in 1994 at age 87, told me of his memories of going down the street and being able to walk into bakeries and food stores, able to buy any amount of any kind of food imaginable...and a few short years later, people were starving and cutting down trees and fences to stay warm enough to survive the winter. My great grandfather’s property was seized by the Communists - for the “People,” don’t you know - and he died a bitter man about 15 years after my grandfather left, with all that he had ever worked for stolen by a bunch of thugs who wanted (and had) power.
My lesson from all this is that you DO have to count your blessings, and that you can NEVER count on other people to do the right thing. Yes, you hope that they do it, but power is the single strongest aphrodisiac - people will do ANYTHING to get and maintain it, morality and the public welfare be damned. I have seen NOTHING on the Left - or, specifically, from the Clintons’ lifetime in and around power - that persuades me that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t lie, cheat and steal to obtain the Presidency, or that she wouldn’t systematically destroy all mechanisms of our government and nation that would deny her more and permanent power (well, permanent until she died, anyway - and most sociopaths like her don’t care what happens once they die).
Hillary Clinton is, in my opinion and based on my knowledge of human history and my own family history, our Lenin. She’s on the train on the way to St. Petersberg...we dare not allow her to get off that train and gain power, or we will end up worse as a nation than Russia did after the Communists came to power.
An observation.
Indeed the Bolsheviks were evil beyond the pale, yet chronic and compulsive Romanov incompetence made the former inevitable; just as the Bourbons brought the French Revolution down upon their heads.
We are in our current morass of decline because we have willfully surrendered the vision of our Founders. Whether we can recapture it, remains problematic.
Greece and Rome, the creators of Western Civilization, rose and fell. Most emphatically, we will not not escape history!