Marecki on 4/6/2019 at 08:48
Okay, this week's anniversaries. Calendars, I have heard of them! Anyway:
On the one hand, we have got the 75th anniversary of the Allied Normandy landings. An immensely complex operation, in many ways a masterpiece of planning and disinformation, which finally put the Western European Allies on the offensive - with pretty much minimal casualties for an operation of that magnitude. And let us not forget all the soldiers who actually charged off the troop transports towards the heavily fortified French beaches... I do not think I would have the balls to do something like that.
And then on the other hand, the 30th anniversary of when one "people's government" decided to talk to the people it supposedly represented using the language governments of this sort have, sadly, repeatedly shown to be the only one they are fluent in. Some people call this the Tiananmen Square Massacre but this is not correct: there was no actual fighting in the square. Not that it matters to all the unarmed people, including innocent bystanders, whom People's Liberation Army liberated from their subversive thoughts - along with their lives - as it made its way into the centre of Beijing.
What a day.
demagogue on 4/6/2019 at 09:47
And now Europe's falling apart, China is ascendant as the next superpower, and the US (and not only the US) appears almost eager to help them along and has lost all moral credibility on the international stage. :sweat:
One good reason is that people have short memories and anniversaries like today don't really register with them, what they represent and why they're important to remember.
Because if they did register, I don't think you'd see half of the things happening these days, populist governments or movements on the rise in a lot of countries, an authoritarian turn in a lot of countries, the crumbling of all the postwar multilateral institutions that have defined economic and social progress for the last century...
Ok, well, I guess we're due for a good rant on this while the topic is up.
Now is as good a time as any to remember that the meaning of these events is those things matter, and what's happening right now isn't acceptable if we don't want history to repeat. Just for quick review: communists and nazis are bad. International cooperation, science-based policy, the protection of human rights and of vulnerable groups, and open trade, broad immigration & multiculturalism are all good. We don't hate people because of their race or language or culture. We don't pillory some imagined group as pure evil whose simple elimination will solve all of our problems dude by calling them the 1% or bankers or elites or Jews or Zionists or Muslims or terrorists or Mexicans or Turks or "the imperialists" or whitey or black-lives-matter or the man or capitalists or what-have-you. The way you're supposed to do it we all sit down together, with the attitude that we're all in this together, and together we figure out how to solve real & complicated problems, like climate change and poverty and exploitation, with clever solutions -- we can start by asking the experts with the PhD's in the subject -- without all the conspiracy mongering. That's what today represents. That's what their sacrifice was for.
Edit: Changed colonizers to imperalists. Colonial gov'ts themselves were bad mojo. It's not cool to rule over people without their consent or legitimacy. So not sad to see them go. I meant to refer to the way Chinese & Soviets would talk about the "imperialists" as a boogieman to attack their own people.
Gray on 4/6/2019 at 12:14
I could not agree more. Thank you for using more clever words than I can think of.
rachel on 4/6/2019 at 15:11
Hear hear.
(Nitpicking: D-Day was June 6th 1944.)
I'm very troubled by the developments of the past few years. These lessons were costly, it wouldn't do to have to relearn them the hard way all over again...
Marecki on 4/6/2019 at 16:57
Quote Posted by raph
(Nitpicking: D-Day was June 6th 1944.)
So it was. I was quite sure that to have been then case but then I found out there have been several celebrations nearby scheduled for today (for one thing I had Dakotas flying over my head for the better part of the day) and since it didn't make sense to me to reschedule celebrations of an event like this from one working day to another working day I assumed I must have remembered wrong and it was the 4th after all... PLEASE don't tell me they have made it the 4th so that the Orange One could participate.
Nameless Voice on 5/6/2019 at 18:52
Sadly, those who do not care to remember the past are inevitably doomed to repeat it.
Starker on 7/6/2019 at 19:26
D-Day, the day Antifa thugs ruined some very fine people's beach day. Never forget.
