I was asked by a friend to share this.
For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900. When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.
When you're 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet.
When you're 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million. At 52, the Korean War starts and five million perish.
At 64 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn’t end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict. Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening.
As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A kid in 1985 didn’t think their 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents (and now great grandparents) survived through everything listed above.
Perspective is an amazing art. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Let’s be smart, help each other out, and we will get through all of this. In the history of the world, there has never been a storm that lasted. This too, shall pass.
The storms pass but they keep on coming and we keep making their effect worse than they needed to be if not actually creating them.
Looking back every shit storm in my life was 100% avoidable and the effects orders of magnitude worse than they needed to be. But yes, the amount of shit is definitely declining but I think that is more than offset by our increased expectations that humanity should not be stabbing itself in the eye so frequently. It's the gawd dang 21st Century and we stilldon't all have jetpacks and flying cars yet? WTF!
It will pass but a lot of us did not and will not get through it. Please don't diminish the significance of 130,000 and counting preventable American deaths.
My father was born in '26. The changes to come in his lifetime were unimaginable, including the unprecedented corruption we're watching like a train wreck. He is one of the last surviving WWII vets and he did not serve so that a pathetic group of grifters could topple the American empire for their own benefit. We were progressing, albeit slowly, and I'm not sure we can recover from the damage caused by these Neanderthals. But I can guarantee you one thing, we are going to try like hell!
@SpikeTalon No opportunity for discussion once someone is rude.
@SpikeTalon How many times have you edited your original post?
@SpikeTalon Right.
And no, more than 130,000 of us won't get through this. Who knows? You could be one of them.