Sunrise With Schubert: February 10, 2018

Cleaning files on a rainy morning, I came across a photo Brenda took of a bunch of old men, the kind that annoy you at Walmart, the ones that hold up the line for a driver's license and then can't pass the eyesight test. In all likelihood, they are all dead now soon to be forgotten. They were young men, though, when they came ashore at Normandy on D-Day plus seven, and proceeded to fight their way across France, Belgium, and western Germany to a costly victory over fascism.

America loved them then.

The photo released any number of thoughts, some related, some not. They still whirl around inside me like a flock of blackbirds looking for a place to land.

It seems that, anymore, we don’t picture our veterans as proud men who came home from a war and took up their lives. Our image now is the pathetic figure of a man standing on the street corner with a sign proclaiming he is a homeless vet who needs help.

It would, no doubt, shock the unwary to learn how few of these men ever wore the uniform of our country. We believe them though, when they say they served, because the power of myth shreds reality like a tank crashing through a hedgerow, the type that those brave men of the 79^th Infantry Division had to fight through in their real war.

Back to the photograph. It made me think about men I knew as a young child. They weren’t old then. They were still young and proud. They had just whipped the asses of both Hitler and Hirohito and were reunited with those who loved them. It was time to get back to home and work.

Germany and Japan, both the deadly enemies in that forgotten war, are now friendly allies with our country. One wonders, however, how it all began. Theories abound, some more believable than others.

I thought about the country from which half of may ancestors came. What created the shame that resulted from Germany’s vision of the future? It’s easy to say that Hitler hated Jews and others and that he caused it all.

Recent history makes me wonder. I’m not sure that one man’s hatred could have caused the millions of deaths created by humankind’s venturing into a second planetary war. I can better understand now that Hitler was only the final ingredient that made the cauldron boil. Could he have just been the catalyst that energized a national psyche all primed and ready for aggression against anyone standing close and helpless? Psychopaths are very good at sensing anger and using it to suit their purposes.

Can a world be disrupted, now even destroyed, because the path to war is made, by individuals and groups of individuals, to seem like the “yellow brick road.” Can nefarious forces make a collective population believe that hatred of others is the philosophical equivalent of love for their country? Hitler and his cronies were very good at creating and spreading anger via the high-tech capabilities of their day.

Consider how easy it is, in time of the internet. With goading from a 24-hour propaganda machine posing as a news source, assistance from foreign enemies, and the lure of discord formed by social media, to foment hatred of identified targets. It is quite simple not only to create anger, but also to direct that anger at whomever we please, even innocent victims.

Could greed and love of power be transformed into violence directed toward others to the point where the world erupts again? If the men in the photo were young again, but knew what lay ahead, could they warn us away from the road to war? Or would we rush in again, feeding egos, serving the needs of foreign enemies posing as friends, and enriching the profiteers of warfare? Are we that angry?

The signs aren’t good.

They were young men when they
 crossed the Rhine into Germany