Now although I write historical novels, I don’t write about history as such, and I have no especial fondness for the past.
I write stories, and as such I am interested in people, and why we do what we do, and why we feel as we do.
So this post and this following video is not about politics.
If you want to vote for a man with a deranged hamster sitting on his head, that’s your choice.
The freedom to express your opinions freely is called democracy.
What I want to draw your attention to here is story, particularly this story: the story of the human race. How chapters of that story are repeated over and over.
So I’m tagging a link to a news interview you won’t find on YouTube. It’s only 3 minutes long and it’s essential viewing.
Look out for what George Takei says at the end of this short three minute clip: “We don’t know our history and when we don’t know it, we don’t learn from our history.”
“We don’t know our history and when we don’t know it, we don’t learn from our history.”
The one thing that impressed me after many years as an historical novelist is not that Viking helmets didn’t have horns or that people in the Middle Ages really didn’t think the world was flat, it is this:
We do not know our history and that is the reason we keep repeating it.
We do it over and over and over. There is nothing in any way novel about Donald Trump or ISIS.
Knowing what has happened in the past is the only way we will ever find our way forward.
But George says it better. Click here for the link:
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Trump is so scary, and he’s waaaay ahead in the poles! We are living in the time, once again, of religious persecution and racism. I flipped through channels and heard Pat Robertson talk about how the Koran tells everyone to be submissive and teaches hatred. I would say that Pat’s doing a pretty good job of exemplifying that.
It’s true, Suzie. We have the same knee-jerk reactions to the samr problems and wonder why we end up in the same messes. Trump hysteria is a replay of the fascism in Germany in the thirties. As George says i.n the video clip: “We don’t know our history and because we don’t know it, we keep repeating it.”
The first time I heard about these camps was while walking in the Camino (yes read you’re book which is how I found you. I was shocked by it. But then again… I wonder how much we really know about what’s happening in the world.
Thanks Dina - and about how much we know about the world. If we listen to trad media, very little, I think!