Read Thom Hartmann's Substack. The subtitle, "history warns us: every major economic crash has led to a world war. Trump’s corruption, debt, and tariffs may be lighting the fuse…" is what my partner, Ann, just read to me when she looked at this and said I should read Thom’s Substack.
When I did, I thought of two sayings about history. The obvious one is about what happens to those who don't learn from history. We can thank George Santayana's “The Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress" for "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
The other is from Shakespeare: "What's past is prologue." This is a quotation from his play The Tempest. Of course it now means that history sets the context for the present.
What this doesn't address is that it is possible that there are those in power who do understand this. When it comes to a depression, they don't care. Far more alarming, when it comes to war, they may actually want one. Trump who enjoys playing the wrestling villain, generally bullying all his enemies, and his macho posturing henchmen like Hegeseth and Homan, (and a few henchwomen) may actually want a war.
They have all these weapons. To them they may be toys they are itching to play with. It's not like when I drove across country for the first time before moving to Portland to visit before moving here from Massachusetts. This was in a fast sports car. At 5:00 AM with no cars on the highway I waited for a very wide woodsy divided median on a straight stretch so there wouldn't be a police car on the oposite side to clock my speed. Then floored it. I got it up to 140 mph before the governor on the car wouldn't let me go any faster. It was scary and exhilerating. Boys will be boys, right?
All I risked was a hefty speeding ticket and maybe one for reckless driving, not starting a war. (I may have gotten off with a warning because the many cops I've known like to have a chance to engage in a high speed chase and open up their giant engine police cars and see how fast they can go. I know some have done this in the wee hours of the morning because when I was a reserve cop myself we clocked a sheriff deputy at over 120mpg when we were running radar from a bridge over the expressway though town.)
