If I could contact my deceased relatives, specifically my parents and grandparents, I would write them a letter to thank them for holding steady to the task and remaining undeterred during hardship conditions in the U.S. by the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II. During those trying times, I’m certain they went without a way of life they most likely had appreciated during the decade before the economy went to great depredations while serving up serious threats to health and life itself. During the period of the second world war, from late 1941 to August, 1945, they had to cope with rationing of all items, food and material, and the constant possibility, at least during the early years of war, that the Empire of Japan would invade and overtake Americans on the West Coast. These conditions persisted -for my forebears and those of most other Americans- for 50 months.
I would tell them in my letter of appreciation that I know from reading about what the Japanese and Germans did to other nations they invaded that, if they and millions of other Americans had not risen to hold forth and fight tooth and nail to avoid a triumph by Japan, we likely today would be under an emperor’s harsh-ruled dictatorship and most certainly required to serve Imperial Japan as its slaves and speak Japanese should we have wanted to survive, though in servile fashion. I would spend quite a bit of space in my letter relating the fact that a significant percentage of the current U.S. population find it too great a hardship to endure some space and movement limitations on their freedom for the good of all, attempting to avoid a disease that has already killed thousands, spares few in its wake and looks to carry on with its human toll as long as we ignore measures to protect ourselves against its spread.
Such is the picture of America now when compared to it less than a mere 90 years ago. With the value of the almighty dollar taking the place of the value of life for the current generations alive today, the American now wonders nervously, anxiously what is to become of us, now a nation also with its Constitution, Bill of Rights, rule of law and way of life and living under daily attack by a collection of persons in high office who care mainly and almost exclusively for wealth and power over the health, safety and the very lives of their citizens.
(Gene H. McIntyre shares his opinion frequently in the Keizertimes.)