To Mend the Future We Must Act Now
Eighty Years Ago America Made a Choice to do What is Right
Like every guy my age it seems I am drawn to the stories of the Second World War. My uncles served and suffered grievously. My father was too old already and was kept home to build aircraft engines, which is where he met my mother the year she turned 18. I wonder what I would have done were I just out of high school and it’s 1944.
As lives pass into memories, think about this: if you were 17 landing on the beaches of Normandy today, June 6th 1944 you would be 97 years old. All this happened because a madman took his country down the darkest human path. But that is a matter for another day.
What if this day had not happened? What if France had stayed a conquered land? What if America—divided, complacent and comfortable in its isolationism—had not risen to do the right thing? How often do we do the right thing by choice because it’s the right thing? We have effected change but nearly all of it under threat at home. Change for justice, for decency, for inclusion, for human rights has never happened willfully, easily, without a fight.
As a nation, we are again at a precipice. If we do not act now to mend the future then there will be no America, no future worth having. We must not fail to act to stop the forces of tyranny that this time do not threaten us from abroad but from within. The courts will not save us. Congress is all but useless. The majority of the press has given itself over to profit without principle.
And now there is yet another madman promising to destroy democratic ideals out of narcissism, personal grievance, and unrestrained sociopathy. A significant portion of the nation has abdicated decency and critical assessment to follow him and another good portion is somehow too busy to care. If we do not do now what must be next there will be little tomorrow worth remembering.
