Far From the Front

Today in History

It is the 20th Day of the Third Month of the 22nd Year of the 21st Century.  I always have to think carefully about that:  the very first century was the “0” century, but it still counts.  And the “00” year (2000) is technically the end of the last century, not the beginning of the new one (though we celebrated like it wasn’t 1999!!).   It just like a ten-year-old isn’t considered a “pre-teen”, but an eleven year old is.  So it is the 22nd year, but it’s actually one more century then Twenty.  Glad I got all that off of my chest.

A Wireless World

Folks born when I was, 1956 and thereabouts, thought the world would be totally different by now.  It’s not “The Jetsons” scenario, flying cars and robot housekeepers, but we really did think it would be altered more than it is.  Yes, I am typing now on a Macbook Pro that has more power than the computers that launched the Apollo Moon Missions, and carry another powerful computer with instant worldwide access in my pocket, my IPhone. 

 And I spent Saturday morning battling with electronic equipment and Spectrum (my internet provider), trying to determine why the multiple wireless devices around our home are running so slow.  Spectrum blamed my home network, I blamed their router. After lots of conversations and no conclusions, all of a sudden everything is back humming along again.  I don’t think it was my futzing with the plugs, Spectrum did something that unblocked whatever was clogged.

But the scenes on the television (sure it’s 55” and 4HD and doesn’t take fifteen minutes to warmup) are closer to the images my parents’ generation saw.  The Russian war machine is slowing chewing through Ukraine, killing civilians not as “collateral damage”, but as targeted punishment to try to force the Ukrainian Government to beg for mercy.  All our modern technology has given us the “insider view” of war, down to the bombs falling on the children’s hospital.  

History Rhyming Again

We are watching Manchuria in 1932 or Poland In 1939.  Regular people, just like you and me, with kids and pets and yards they took care of, are being swallowed up as “spoils” of war.  Three weeks ago they were watching the same internet sites, playing the same video games.  There was an interview with a young woman, who, like my son, is a DJ; developing and playing her own music in clubs.  She literally had to give it all up, not just the DJ-ing (obviously not a lot of night-life in a war zone) but the music.  No good listening to the music on her earpods – she might miss the air raid warning of the next bombing.

There are over a thousand women and children buried under a bombed out theatre in Mariupol.  The building was targeted, despite the word “CHILDREN” painted large in the parking lot.  It’s like the words made it a “higher value” prize for the Russian bombers.  It’s in the middle of a warzone, and still local firefighters and others are trying to pry folks out; but it doesn’t sound promising.

Forty years ago when I thought about the 2020’s, I didn’t think about the rise of Authoritarianism both here in the United States and overseas.  I didn’t think that dictators would again try to build empires and wreak savage conflict on civilians, children; just to fulfill some long forgotten dream of their “racial” place in history.  That wasn’t what the future was supposed to look like.

Prophecy 

Oddly, much of the science fiction I read as a teenager actually did prophesize one more world cataclysm, somewhere towards the turn of the 20th century.  Even in the show Star Trek there were the “Eugenics Wars”, that ended in a world industrial collapse, recovered by the invention of the “Warp Drive” engine to introduce humanity to deep space.  In other books there was a final brush with nuclear annihilation.  I always read those as fatalistic, that mankind hadn’t learned the lessons of World Wars the First or Second time.  Now, looking at Ukraine, maybe those guys were right.

I had a front yard conversation with our neighbor the other day.  He asked an interesting question:  what are WE doing to prepare for war?  I was a little taken aback, I don’t anticipate Russian T-57 Battle Tanks coming up Broad Street to take control of Dairy Hut and McDonalds.  But that’s not what he meant.  

All our life is connected through that same internet I was fighting with this morning.  There’s but a single paper dollar in my wallet.  The water, gas and electric meters aren’t “read” anymore, just a signal picked up by the utility.  Almost every aspect of our life is now controlled through web connections.  It wouldn’t take a physical invasion to disrupt American life, just someone running a computer program in an obscure building in St. Petersburg.  Our “cards” would stop working, our electricity stop flowing.  That would be enough to change everything.

Prepping

He suggested that we be ready to go back to a “cash” society;  maybe stick $1000 in twenties in the fireproof bag hidden in the house.  We should stock up on food supplies, in case the electric doors and check-out lines at the Kroger’s fail.  And maybe we need to make sure there’s an extra can of propane for the grill, an extra five gallons of gas for the generator, in case this conflict goes “cyber”.  After all, the Russian ruble is almost worthless, Russian retaliation against the US dollar might just be in the virtual world we all live in.

Does my neighbor sound a little like a “prepper”, one of those folks who head for the woods with their hunting rifles to take care of themselves when the “apocalypse” arrives?  Sure, and he admits that’s true.  But something to keep in mind.  Did we ever think we would see what’s happening in Ukraine?  Wasn’t that all in grainy black and white films late at night or in some history classroom?  It was something we learned about, but never expected to experience ourselves.

Today it’s real.  Who knows what the next “reality” might become.  I’m no “prepper” either, but there are a few more cans of soup and vegetables in the pantry, some extra gas in the shed.  And maybe there will be more than just one dollar in my wallet for a while. 

Essays on the Ukraine Crisis

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.