My Thoughts
I receive a ton of email … every day; because of spam filters, thank goodness, I only see a small portion of what comes addressed to my various email accounts but what gets through is highly annoying and time consuming. Most of it is junk which is abnormally normal for those of us tethered to our computers; no one enjoys delete, delete, delete, delete, … read, save, delete, delete, …
But it is that occasional read, save, read again that makes all the wasted time nominally worthwhile. I just wish the proportion of deletes to saves could somehow be reversed. It is what it is, however. Last Friday I received a weekly email from The Fellowship of St. James, the publisher of Touchstone magazine, with a subject that, had I not recognized the sender, I might have easily hit the delete button thinking it was an email from some banker in Nigeria wanting to send me an enormously large check. The subject: What Would You Protest If You Had a Billion Dollars? Hmmmm, sounds a bit over the top for a scam but maybe not. Read on. From the first paragraph, I was hooked or rather intrigued and fascinated. It seemed unsettlingly familiar.
For two months, people had spent almost all their free time in their homes and apartments. Then suddenly one day, there were crowds in the streets, then protesters, followed by looting and burning and injuries. Surprised politicians and government officials responded by either applauding or denouncing the events, some plotting on how to take advantage of the new situation.
Like I said, it sounded all too familiar. But the following two paragraphs brought it into its proper historical context.
That all began on February 22, 1917 (Old Calendar). After two months of sub-zero weather had kept the citizens of Petrograd mostly indoors, a sudden and prolonged spring thaw brought crowds outside to enjoy the sunshine and spring temperatures in the 40s (Fo). Small protests, commonplace in Russia, grew larger over the next few days. An observer on the second day noted: “The crowd did not seem to be organized; it was a miscellaneous mob of men and women, students, boys, girls and workmen.” The ranks of factory strikers, socialist radicals, anti-war, anti-government and/or anti-tsarist demonstrators quickly swelled. (The Russian Revolution: A New History, Sean McMeekin, 2017).
Army mutinies in Petrograd and at the naval base at Kronstadt were not quashed and began to spiral out of control. Within ten days of that first sign of spring, the 300-year-old Romanov monarchy was over. The Tsar abdicated the throne. Russia was left headless, with a cadre of bickering and plotting political leaders, activists, and revolutionaries, ranging from pro-tsarist, constitutional monarchist, and socialist intoxicants of various proofs to full bore Bolshevist Marxism.
Still seems all too familiar. First the coronavirus pandemic around the end of February and the beginning of March, 2020, followed by quarantines, lockdowns, widespread economic meltdown and viral panic incited by government bureaucrats and radical Marxist/Socialists, most noticeably democrat mayors, governors and members of Congress along with their media propaganda machine, soon followed by looting, uncontrolled violence, murder, anarchy, chaos and rioting egged on by Antifa/BLM radicals in “mostly peaceful” protests.
It sure does seem all too familiar. Just saying. Wake up, America!
Just my thoughts for a Monday, for what it is worth.
