Attributed to Mark Twain
Friends dropped off a 1971 edition of LIFE magazine last week. Perusing its pages has been alternately comforting and distressing. Most of the headlines and articles could have been reprinted today: “The Four-Day Work Week” and “Our Public Lands Up for Grabs,” for example.
And then there’s the op-ed by Thomas Griffith that starts out with, “An optimist is someone who believes that the time will shortly come when Americans again casually refer to themselves as ‘we the people.’ They certainly don’t now. Everything is clusters and lumps — clusters of people who feel linked by a shared threat to what they most value; the rest they lump together as ‘the others.’” Really, the only noticeable differences are the cigarette ads (without those ubiquitous Surgeon General’s warnings), ads for enormous cars (and a Datsun). Even the fashions aren’t that odd.
Mind you, this was pre-Watergate, and pre-gas shortages. Roll the clock forward a couple years and the similarities to current events would likely be even more apparent.
During the early days of the pandemic I remember reading articles about the Spanish Flu epidemic and the protests about mask mandates and thinking how odd it was that we were having the same conversations a century later.
There’s no proof Mark Twain said the above quote, but it’s scarily accurate. What if this is all one of those mastery learning method classes where you have to get a passing grade to be promoted to the next level? If that’s the case, we need to do some studying.
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Congratulations to the winning candidates in the local primary elections. The votes you received are a representation of trust, faith and hope that you will carry out your duties with wisdom, honesty and integrity.
Whew. What a ride.
By NIKI TURNER – editor@editorht1885.com
