The Way Forward

Dear FalloutShelter,

When I was young backyard fallout shelters were all the rage. Your UN makes me wonder if we might be of the same generation?

"Don't give up the ship" are the famous last words of the Captain of frigate USS Chesapeake said after he was mortally wounded in battle with frigate HMS Shannon on June 1, 1813. I’ll not digress to discuss the very complex story of what happened next (Chesapeake did strike her colors not all that long afterwards, and it was the onboard US Marines, not the sailors, who, in fact, fought on).

I know more than a middling of history. So, I totally agree with you that things are dark now. I know that I will not live to see things get better. I doubt that anyone born in the past century will.

I first began a serious look at Fascism when I (convinced my mother) to join Book of The Month in order to get The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer (a journalist who was in Berlin during the rise of Hitler). I still have more than 10 feet of my bookshelf space devoted to Totalitarianism in general, to Naziism in particular. I own all of Hitler's and Mussolini's books. Have many of the propaganda works prepared by Goebbels.

As soon as the second Bu$h term, I seriously began to worry our nation was headed there again.

After all, Fascists very nearly deposed FDR in 1933 to replace him with a Fascist regime. The only thing which saved this from happening (known to historians as “The Business Plot”—as wealthy industrialists—Ford, Irénée du Pont , Prescott Bush (yep, father/GF of our two Bu$hes), the presidents of GM, Montgomery Ward, Remington Arms, Singer Sewing Machines … et al) — were behind it) was that the person they chose to put in FDR’s place was retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler. Instead of becoming their figurehead, he blew the whistle on the plot.

There were Congressional hearings. These were mostly aimed at covering it all up. There is way too much history to discuss here now. It can all be found (for the nonce) online. Who knows when this information will disappear down the “Memory Hole” as described in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

What I am trying to, in my usual over convoluted way, to say is to take inspiration from “Don’t give up the ship!”

If no one tries to keep the Light of Democracy, the Light of Learning alight, the Endarkenment will simply last just that much longer. But, the world WILL see light again.

As you are an artist, you will recognize this Delacroix painting “Liberty Leading the People”—which, no, is not a painting of the 1789 French Revolution. History (even of Art) is complex and not widely known

You cannot stand before this awesome painting in the Louver without having Hope for the Future