A different story about D-Day and WW II
A different story about D-Day and WW II
TGIF TAT readers,
I wish to leave you with an end of the week story about the lessons of WW II, as we memorialize D-Day. This essay is as pertinent to this week’s powerful history lessons as it is to our current political landscape. The lessons are there for all to see, but I just haven’t seen someone approach the history and lessons from the perspectives that I will share today. Personally, I believe it imperative for US and global democracy to take a step back and consider what I will share in this essay.
The BLUF: an old army saying that means, Bottom Line Up Front.
The runup to WW II in the west and especially here in the US, looked very similar to the disastrous political landscape that we are currently experiencing. It took the second world war, 1939-1945 to sort out the mess and we’ve let those costly lessons, slip through our fingers and into near oblivion. We do this, at our own peril.
Today, I will focus far more on the prewar US than the globe, as that US voters in many respects, hold the keys to a world that survives free, or under the oppressive thumbs of tyrants, fascists and other authoritarian governments, like China, Russia, Iran, N. Korea and countless other lower profile but equally oppressive regimes. If we wish to truly honor those 160,000 Allied troops that ended up on the shore of France, June 6th of 1944, we must do as they did, put our allegedly political differences aside, and dedicate ourselves to liberty. The global Axis of Evil is now every bit as dangerous as the Axis of the WW II, Germany, Italy and Japan.
We must come together and rein in Xi, Putin, the theocratic terrorists in Tehran and the pipsqueak in N. Korea or suffer another global war, that would likely consume more of humanity than the fascist fires of the 1940s. This time around, we must defeat the thugs, before we line countless more fields with the stark white stones, bearing witness to the cost of saving liberty from the clutches of evil. The only way to preserve liberty at this phase of history, is to storm not the beaches of France, but the ballot boxes where fascists have conned roughly half of American voters, to believe in their fake patriotism, that is really fascism dressed up as patriotism.
Those millions of lives decimated in our last global war, will have been for nothing, if we allow our so-called politics, to continue down the path it is currently on. Protecting freedom, is not only who we are or were as Americans but is our responsibility, no matter what political party you believe in. Anything less, is simply un-American.
Let’s look at the background in the US prior to WW II and I can absolutely guarantee, you will see shades of 2024 as plainly as the nose on your face.
Prior to WW I and afterwards, all the way up to the December 7th, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, most of America was isolationist and suffering from the unhealthiest of political divisions, also based on fascism, some socialism, Christian Nationalism and racism, etc. We were tearing our republic apart over un-American movements, all with their own radical ideology. Nazis as well as Communists and Socialists, relentless Christian Nationalists, the very ones behind prohibition and the dramatic expansion of organized crime and of course, the scourge of racism had significant followings in those painful depression era years, 1929 through the beginning of WW II.
The Great Depression, a global event defined the lives of people until WW II came along and those who experienced both, would see unimaginable horrors and suffering in their lifetime. Communists, embracing labor movements to fight back against the 1% who were the primary catalysts of the Depression. They supported those under the thumb of racism who suffered disproportionately in the job market. Nazis and KKK sympathizers, like Trump’s father who was arrested at a brawl in Queens in 1927, had marched in the thousands through the streets of New York City. They were well aligned with the hundreds of thousands of KKK members, who also marched all across the country in the streets of major cities. Both the racists and the Nazis embraced the movements sporting Christian Nationalist ideology.
FDR/ President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his New Deal colleagues incessantly battled the Republican Party, like today, supported by elite wealth in order to get New Deal legislation passed. It wasn’t just the New Deal that was being obstructed by the GOP. What most Americans don’t know though and as it pertains to today’s essay, is that he also battled the GOP isolationists who obstructed at every turn, his support for the Allies, already at war against the Axis since 1939. The global winds of war and its precursors blew hard and at hurricane strength endlessly in the 1930s. Failure to deal with the precursors of imminent war, in fact led to years of slaughter. Men of allied nations, like those who stormed the cliffs at Pointe de Hoc, would pay the price and even those who survived, would never be the same. Civilian populations would be devastated, some intentionally like via the Holocaust or Japan’s inhumane brutality at places like Nanking and all across Asia and most often, simply because they lived in the path of armies.
As I have told in various essays, I grew up the son of a history teacher and from the time I could read, sat in front of my father’s cinder block and pine board bookshelves (all a teacher could afford) absorbing history. I also would become a historian of and to this day, history plays a significant role in my research. The brief explanations of this essay aren’t even the proverbial, “tip of the iceberg” required to explain the powerful traumas and sufferings of the world of the 30s and 40s. The real tragedy is that all of this was preventable, had leaders and their constituents bothered to look at reality through the lens of history and common-sense.
These days, governments and corporations employ legions of risk analysts who could provide clear insights into the threats at hand. Board rooms though, listen primarily to those analysts that forecast their bottom lines, not the risk analysts. Today, half the world still does business with China and Russia. Even our so-called allies like Modi’s India, help Putin evade sanctions. Voters are largely to blame.
Obsessions with party over country mold voter support for elected leaders, even the fascist ideology of today’s MAGA controlled Republican Party. There are leaders on the left as well that have succumbed to false narratives about Gaza and the Palestinian people. This is dangerous because relieving pressure on Hamas, enables and expands Iran’s, Putin’s and Xi’s power. Then, there’s today’s GOP that overtly supports Putin, which also means supporting Xi and Iran.
All of this should raise alarm bells in readers because it is a stark replay of what America and the world experienced before the last world war. The difference is powerful though. In 1939 and on December 7th, 1944, all allies put aside their allegedly political differences and collectively confronted evil. In 2016 when Putin attacked the West with influence operations and enabled Brexit and a Trump presidency, it was the first time that America and the West did not unify to confront evil or an attack from a foreign adversary. We allowed it to win and the winning, continues to this very day.
Here in the US, many make fun of my projections about the 2024 election. I clearly stated that in 2020, the fascists would acquire more votes than they did in 2016. They got 4 million more. It will be little different and still, no one is taking this warning seriously. It is the same in Europe as well. Our national security community still refuses to not only listen to expertise, but also refuses to address mis/ disinformation and propaganda. They are still holding meeting where high-profile but the same alleged “experts” pontificate about the threat. Again, NATO and Europe are just as impotent and dedicated to more failure.
My friends, liberty is no less at threat than it has been since the years leading up to 2016. In fact, we may be at a higher risk. So long as we refuse to address the countless versions of fascist ideology that have been adopted as political platforms, we run the risk of having to sentence more troops, men and women to their deaths on cliffs like Pointe du Hoc. So long as we don’t challenge fascism, Christian Nationalism and racism with true American and global democratic values, our best and brightest will again lie beneath the stark white stones lining the cemeteries, like the ones above the shores of France.
To put it bluntly, either voters stop allowing themselves to be conned by the ideologies of fake patriotism, or they will lose their liberty or themselves, lie beneath those white, heart-wrenching stones one day. The signs are all there for those who read and understand history. It doesn’t take a graduate or undergraduate degree to understand this history. It’s right there in the curriculum of most high schools. The only exceptions are in states like my home state of Texas, where primary and secondary curriculum is being reshaped into the ideology of the far-right. The polite term is they are “historical revisionists.” I have far less than polite names for their efforts.
I haven’t stormed the beaches of Normandy, but I have spent nearly three total years in combat zones, fighting terrorism. No human should have to experience war. In the 30s and 40s, it was fascism. During the Cold War, it was Communism. As the history tends to recycle trends, we are now back to fascism. The only way to avoid another catastrophic global war, is to stop Pied Pipers of radical, far-right ideology and any other similar ideology that rears its ugly head in the future.
The only way to truly honor our D-Day veterans and casualties, is to stand for the moral values that our nation and our allied nations were built upon and that they honored with their actions and tragically, ultimate sacrifices. The sooner we do so, the sooner that those heroes beneath the stones, will sleep their eternal sleep in peace. We owe them at least this much.
My best for your weekend, both enjoyable and contemplative.
Paul