We've seen tough times before. [View all]

[surfered]

My generation’s parents suffered the Great Depression as youngsters, then as young adults, Pearl Harbor and WWII, when the length of military service was “for the duration,” meaning until the end of the war, however it turned out.

During the Cold War my generation practiced getting under our elementary school desks in case of a nuclear attack. We survived only to witness the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963 and Martin Luther King, and Robert F Kennedy in 1968.

We watched the fighting on TV after intervening in a civil war in Vietnam, suffering 58,000 US military deaths and 300,000 wounded. Worst of all for the survivors, we realized we had been lied to. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was the first lie and the pretext for troops on the ground. Then President Johnson went on TV to tell us if “we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii and next week we’ll have to fight in San Francisco.” Saigon fell in 1975 and none of that happened. It’s a cold feeling to know your government will lie about matters of your life or death.

They lied to us again in Iraq, where we unleashed a civil war, when we were told “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” A lot of us had seen this movie before and spoke out, loudly and often, but to no avail.

Then the 1986 real estate crash, the 2008 housing bubble, climate change, Trump’s election, climate change, Covid, climate change, Trump’s re-election and climate change.

By luck, we’re still here. Times can look very dark. I’ve been scared, too, but life goes on. What else can you do, but to put one foot in front of the other?

I’m scared now, but don’t give up because that’s a dead end. There’s no guarantee, but it’s worked out so far and there’s another election in just two years.

Peace