EDITOR:

My father, and all four of his brothers, chased and fought Nazis all over Europe in the first half of the 1940s.

My dad shared much of what he saw while in that fight. To his dying day he could not understand how humans could conduct such atrocities on other humans as he saw during his time there. He taught me to always do whatever I could to not let such tyranny ever happen again.

Dad has got to be rolling over in his grave at the current effort to dismantle our government, and that some who are supposed to be representing us are allowing and encouraging it to happen.

What is that old saying about “If we don’t learn the lessons of history, then we are bound to repeat the mistakes.” The current energy around all this America First business, the war on culture, class, color, and Catholicism, and the obvious rise of Nazi and other white supremacists, are all concrete examples of how history is repeating itself right in front of our eyes.

Following World War I, Americans were tired of war and wanted to only focus on America. That led to the “America First” isolationism of the 1920s. How did that work out for America? Well there were internal conflicts over class, color, culture, and Catholicism. People did not want to pay attention to these internal conflicts, but rather attended more to leisure and their own day-to-day activities. In other words, we wanted to bury our heads in the sand as it related to all the turmoil of the time. That led to the ultra wealthy exploiting our economic system for their own advantage resulting in the very rich getting much richer. That is until they over reached and the Great Depression occurred.

How did the America First mentality work for the rest of the world? Not well at all as the 1930s saw the growth of the Nazi and white supremacy movement in Europe. It was so clear what was happening, but we wanted to focus on what we viewed as our own problems. Of course we all know that the resulting world war became our problem.

What happened in the 1920s and 1930s is happening again. Does anyone actually believe we will have different outcomes this time?

For any of us who are feeling overwhelmed and discouraged over what is happening to our government at this time, it is crucial to our way of life to remain diligent and active. Although it can be so easy to get exhausted, just remember all the soldiers who weren’t able to be exhausted to save the world from Nazis in the 1940s. It is now time to stand up.

John McMahon

Bark River