I avidly follow the news of the nation and the world. Two things stood out today. One: there was no mention, any place I looked, of December 7,1945, the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Seems spooky. Especially as we skirt the margins of a worldwide conflict. Time marches on, appropriately, but the memory of WWII needs to be burned into the world’s collective psyche, embedded, lest we repeat its horrors. In his 1945 inaugural address, less than three months before his death, Franklin Delano Roosevelt pleaded with the world, America specifically: “We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger.”
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/froos4.asp
Two: for my entire adult life, I have followed the Assad family in Syria. Hafez, the elder, came to my attention when his forces slaughtered 20k-40K Syrians in Hama city, Syria to quell an uprising in the 1980’s. His son, Bashar, an eye doctor married to a beautiful young Syrian-Brit, succeeded him. There was so much hope that Syria would evolve into a more tolerant nation. That did not happen. Bashar turned out to be as bad as his dad. Today, the Assad regime fell in dramatic fashion to a rebellion. Good riddance.
