History Repeats? Why?

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When I was 12 or 13-years old I learned a very painful lesson, literally! Who or what taught me this hard painful lesson? The who was my father. The what was a gas-powered mechanical lawn edger.

After edging my neighbor’s front and back lawns with their mechanical edger with the blade spinning on the side, I did not know how to turn it off. I walked to our house, explained to Dad I didn’t have a clue how to turn the motor off so he and I returned to the still running edger. Here’s the complete story in my December 2014 blog-post, To Operate A Mechanical Edger.

The short version of what happened that Saturday afternoon in 1975 was that Dad explained to me verbally, and by pointing at the external spark-plug with its attached metal short-out bar, that all I needed to do was to push that little metal L-clip onto the tip of the spark-plug and the motor and blade would stop. Easy.

WHAAM! 💥😵🥴 I was almost knocked to my ass. Unmoved by what he saw happen to me, Dad repeated again what to do so the motor would shut off. WHAAM! Same painful result. Was I not holding it to the spark-plug long enough? Dad pointed at me to turn it off. WHAAM! This third time hurt even more. I was tearing up and shaking like a leaf in the wind. I looked up to Dad in complete shock and baffled. “Turn it off” he said again with a straight face, unmoved. I tried to hold the clip down even longer this attempt. WHAAAAAM!!! Now I am convulsing trying to shut the edger motor off and crying now.

Finally, Dad had mercy on me, pointed at my other hand holding tight the metal handle-bars, and calmly explained to me “Dwain, your are directing the electrical current from the clip and spark-plug, through both your hands and arms, into your upper body, and back to the edger’s metal handle bars. Move your left-hand off the metal and onto the rubber handles.”

To this day that incident has never left my traumatized memory. It never will leave me, ever. It hurt so much and burned into my fingers, muscles and memory that today anytime I deal with electricity and electrical currents and/or equipment, that painful lesson always rushes back to me.

Why would I want to repeat that horrible, excruciating lesson? Why would anyone want to repeat or keep repeating over and over hard, painful lessons of the past? Why? Isn’t that sheer stupidity?

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In Heather Cox Richardson’s latest Letters from an American dated October 27, 2024, Heather writes “I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way.” But once again she and the rest of normal, sane, democracy-loving Americans have been again taken to all-time lows after Trump’s Nazi-esque rally at Madison Square Garden yesterday. Apparently, his MAGA rally deliberately recalled its February 20, 1939 predecessor, a pro-Hitler rally of some 18,000 “true Americanism” featuring George Washington in his Continental Army uniform front and center stage bookended by swastikas. Yes, I shit you not people!

Heather continues in her letter:

Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024.

Nazi fascist rally in the old Madison Square Garden, New York, USA, Feb. 20, 1939

Her letter is a very good, well-sourced on the verifiable, historical facts and I highly recommend reading it despite how deeply disturbing the rally events panned out. As I read Heather’s letter, skimmed over some other non-profit news coverage of the fascist, Nazi-esque Republican rally yesterday, I kept asking myself this question, Why can’t half of Americans today remember or learn from national and world history, modern history at that!? Seriously, what is that half of the U.S. population’s malfunction? Do they have no clue what the 1930’s–1945 Axis powers did to the entire world, in particular Adolf Hitler, his SS and high-ranking Reich Ministers and Generals, then the Holocaust? WTF!!!?

Written c. 38–41 BCE

Indeed an ignorant child bereft of earnest wisdom and learning.

If you haven’t yet read the 700+ pages of Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership & The Conservative Promise, then I vehemently urge you to do so. It eerily resembles Hitler’s Neuordnung, or “New Order” of 1934–1939. In some parts of Project 2025 it seems identical to Hitler’s vision and near completion of its “promises.”

Will Americans not learn from our grave, indecent, atrocities of the past? Will we never learn from those who we just fought a long, four year war (WW2) to rid Europe and Asia from the worst men in history and the deaths of 75-80 million people worldwide? What does it take to not repeat history in November 2024? How is this even a question right now? I sure as hell don’t want to re-experience my electrical shock memory and trauma as a boy with that damn edger! Isn’t that just common sense?

Addendum 10-30-2024 — Heather Cox Richardson’s follow-up Letter dated Oct. 29, 2024 is another disturbing, poignant letter of former President Trump’s follow-up press conference regarding the Nazi-esque rally Sunday night:

On Monday, Trump felt obliged to tell an audience in Georgia, “I’m not a Nazi.” The Trump campaign has made it a point never to apologize and never to explain, but on Monday it broke that rule, trying to distance itself from performer Tony Hinchcliffe’s comments about Puerto Rico. 

This morning, Trump announced he would hold a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. He showed up more than an hour late for the assembled press, then began the event by undermining faith in the election, claiming the campaign is going “very well; there are some bad spots in Pennsylvania where some serious things have been caught or are in the process of being caught,” although it was unclear what he meant. 

He went on to deliver such a litany of lies that CNN cited them as a reason to cut away from the speech. Trump chose not to acknowledge the offensiveness of the Madison Square Garden event, saying ““The love in that room, it was breathtaking—and you could have filled it many many times with the people that were unable to get in.”

American voters; sane, reasonable, Moderate American voters, if you cannot just read on a literal basis beyond what this narcissistic, megalomaniac, fascist, Orange Orangutan Baby and his extreme MAGA Republican supporters and sycophants are saying BETWEEN the lines, implicitly as well as explicitly, then please do so with vigilance, honorable conscience, with your COUNTRY first, not your Party. You are an American first who loves this country even with all of its flaws and imperfections, as well as its celebrated glories, equality, liberties, and freedoms. Do the right thing by Nov. 5th!

The Professor’s Convatorium © 2023 by Professor Taboo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

30 thoughts on “History Repeats? Why?”

  2. Pingback: History Repeats? Why? | Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

  4. Yes, it is common sense to not want to re-experience your electrical shock moment. Your story is well told, and I could relate to it on several levels, one being the parent telling you to persist with an action that is physically painful. The problem is: the horror of your situation, getting shocked over and over, was YOUR experience, one that YOU will not forget. I didn’t have that particular experience, so I can only share your pain vicariously and that’s a big difference.

    The soldiers of the nineteenth century who experienced marching into a line of withering fire or soldiers of the twentieth century charging into a hail of machine gun bullets could not relate that direct experience, and any attempt to do so could only go so far. Ironically, reading books about war, watching movies about war, and/or listening to veteran’s tales of war, more often than not, instill in the audience, an attraction, a bizarre desire to partake in that experience, to be a hero! The fifteen year old boy dreaming of the glories of war at home (and now we have digital war games where if you are killed you can “reset”) can’t even come close to the actual horror of warfare, until, that is, he’s thrown into it and then it’s too late.

    I would be willing to bet that most of those cheering folk at the MSG rally have never experienced anything even remotely like the atrocities of WWII, and while the speeches, the movies, and the books, can move some of us to push for world peace, those who experienced the reality of world war are gone.

    How could anyone, much less one hundred million Americans, want to put a narcissistic psychopath into the white house is anyone’s guess, but I suspect the addictive urge for Power that is borne out of Fear and Greed has much to do with it.

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    • Paul, an outstanding comment, observations, and assessments! You’ve wonderfully connected your comment not only to this post, but my previous post too, “Our Brains & Pastor J. Waits.” Thank you! 🙂

      You have eloquently and precisely summed up how unfettered, amnesia of the past(?), unchecked extremism with all its accompanying psych issues—both individually and on the mob level—more often than not repeats painful history over and over and over again, as Marcus Tullius Cicero thoroughly understood in c. 38–41 BCE.

      Excellent feedback sir. It is greatly appreciated! 🙏👏

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  5. My first car was an old Hillman Imp.

    In fact it was two cars. One had a working engine, the other the body was okay.

    The pair cost about 100 pounds from a local scrap or garage. Can’t recall.

    My father transferred the good engine into the good body and afterwards announced : “Done. All yours.“

    Say what, says I? You can’t be serious? Me having zero understanding of the I. C. E.

    “Can you read?” says Dad.

    “Of course,” says I.

    “Buy a book.“

    And with that he got up, wiped his greasy hands on a rag, put away his tools and walked off.

    Now, some may think this is a good lesson fir a youngster. Toughen you, make a man out of you, blah, blah.

    Well, it was a frakking nightmare and although I sort of did parts; dad did come back and help here and there, of course. He wasn’t going to let his No1 son drive around in a death trap.

    But that experience put me off motor mechanics for life. All things mechanical in fact. Even though I still know how to change plugs and points and what not, I loathe having to do it, so mostly I don’t.

    However, that scar did kit stop. Me saying the same damn thing to my kids over meaning of some words or something, I think.

    I thought I was being funny and helpful as they knew the story of my car, but I forgot how crap I felt, and here I was doing the sane thing to my kids.

    Now here is the kicker. My son is self-employed and writes code and spends his day building social media advertising campaigns on a computer for companies.

    The first time I got a laptop I had a problem setting it up, not being pc savvy in the least. Turning to my son who is a whizz, he looked from his desk and said. “Dad, can you read?“

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  6. I’m trying hard to remain calm. Keep the blood pressure down, don’t get excited. Surely. SURELY! We have enough rational people in the swing states that matter, to keep our democracy.

    Or surely, we will lose it.

    It sucks living in a political flyover state that votes R every damn time, no matter what.

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    • I feel for ya Brotha. I too know what it is like here in Texas with the same naïve voters—who actually get out and vote?—and vote for the very people/Party who does the most harm to their lives! Texas has been doing the same thing since 1995 when Gov. Ann Richards was last in office losing to George W. Bush. The hardcore radical Repubs have never looked back with their filthy rich wealthy donors and mega-corporations putting most all Republicans into all key offices to keep Texas from turning Purple, god forbid turning Blue! Blue should’ve happened at least 4-6 years ago, but tons & tons of 💰💵💰💵💰 has not just corrupted our federal government in D.C., but also in many states thanks to Citizens United vs FEC in 2010. 😡

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