Erma Bombeck made people laugh with a syndicated column for over 30 years. She started during the Vietnam War, not an easy time to make people laugh. She published 12 books including nine best sellers and stayed with it until 1996, when cancer stopped her.
Perhaps, these days, that’s harder to do but, somewhere, there has to be that light that she would have been able to maintain. Then again, Erma truly was one of a kind and blessed are they who keep the world from despairing.
In the avalanche of notes and photos that surround my computer, in the hovel I call my office, is a picture of my father in his World War II Army uniform. He was beautiful inside and out, all of his life. Afraid of nothing, he was a man of all “seasonings,” a combination of concrete and marshmallow whip. Even in his sergeant’s stripes, his face embraces kindness and hope.
I reflect on the valor of his mother. She sent six of her seven sons off to war and only got five back, but she still managed to cry alone and live her life with dignity and joy. Like millions of mothers, loved ones, and sons around the world, they sacrificed everything to stop a madman. Now, more than ever, we ask, “… for what?” Do we have to do this all over again, with another dictator on our hands? Sure, in the interim, we’ve had others. One can only wonder when the warning system for megalomaniacal, narcissistic, madmen will be improved to the point where they will be checked before they swing.
Most of us would be fascinated with the most recognizable of these, Hitler, if we even scratched the surface of his life. The atrocities he ordered were nothing short of demonic. Even his actions short of those atrocities were hard to believe. The detail to which his brain worked was a complexity but a marvel. He prioritized self-preservation even as his war effort crashed around him; his sanctity of self and the complete and total disregard for humanity, even his own troops. The thoroughness of his attempt to erase his own familial history in hopes of creating a new story more pleasing to his ego was finite, right down to using his troops to eradicate the town where his father was conceived.
We see the similarities here, even if the personal impetus and political history differ. One can only wonder if Putin is trying to write himself into history, with infamy being as valuable to him as fame, via a war which also includes genocide. His actions mimic those of Hitler in their current genocide, attacking the most vulnerable in hospitals and schools.
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