History Repeating Itself

from chapter 19 of King of Soul: But the contest of harmony and invention was playing out far beyond the scripted staffs of musical history, and presenting consequences more grave than the mere listening pleasure of audiences. Still to be found in the world today was the ongoing contest of order against chaos. Here's the ever-present duel between right and wrong; there's the Establishment beating back dissidents, with frequent sightings of the powers that be as they take advantage of the powerless who want to be. And we shan't neglect to mention the plight of them who think they should be running the show, being perpetually put down by them that are in charge of it. And here we learn we do have words that must be said; yet we have words that should never be spoken; but someone will pronounce those words sooner or later. Yes, we do encounter in this life lines in the sand that daren't be crossed, and prohibitions that beg to be violated; we find rules that must be broken, and sometimes we encounter the terrible contests of convention vs. contention. And sometimes we discern, in our times, history repeating itself. In chapter 12 of Smoke, we find an old Frenchman, riding in a train car through the French countryside in the darkness of a 1937 night. He speaks frankly to the young American, Philip, whom has just met:

"Believe me, I have watched this all my life, since before the war, when the Germans occupied it. Now they have taken it again - without firing a shot. Big mistake. My home is in Nancy, just down the road from the Saar and all that. I have watched it happen, and I have wept for France, and for all that is good and decent, which is now to be dragged down into Rhine mud by these Huns and their Bolshevik cousins, who are no better. Lenin and his blasphemous revolutionaries sold the Czar out to Germany in 1917, and they will do it again, unwittingly, no matter what they say. Stalin will kill off his best generals out of jealousy and paranoia before they can be sent to defeat the arrogant Prussian menace. That is what the document - the one you have apprehended, Stalin's foolish purge of his own household - that is what you have in your possession, and need to give to me, because I know what to do with it. Now the formerly fearless Russian bear has become a common murderer, enclosed in the ring to fight to the death the German savage."

So we discern that history, some times, repeats itself, but with a different set of actors. As hitler had used Germans in Sudetanland as an excuse to attack Czechoslovakia in 1939, so does, even now, the little putin Russian use the presence of ethnic Russians in Donbas to attack Ukraine.

The world goes round and round and where it stops nobody knows. For those who are old enough to remember, or literate enough to have trodden the paths of history, they may discern that history repeats itself, with a different cast of characters in each epoch. What's a man to do, but read 'em and weep! Smoke