As I rode my bike on Ogden’s 25th Street Dec. 7, 1941, I heard shouting from windows of the Holly Rue Apartments, desperately crying…”the ‘Japs’ have attacked Pearl Harbor’' … This was the beginning of the Great War with many lives lost. In a recent column, Bret Stephens poses the question: Is our current world threatened by war as happened in 1941? He mentions the current weak free world leadership in the likes of Joe Biden and Boris Johnson as compared to Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. He mentions outdated problematic thinking in the free world’s military.
Also, the current disintegration of our national moral consciousness is my concern. Trumpism has taken over the Republican Party with its nationalist and authoritarian views. To me the fiber of our democracy and a general public malaise is threatening. Compounding this problem, the Covid-19 pandemic has infused malaise into the national economic and cultural spirit … poll numbers reflect this disillusionment.
Now, eighty years later I am paused: Will our weakness and the rise of world illiberal dictatorships sink the freedom and liberty we have enjoyed? The jury is out and only time will tell. But thankfully the times are not exactly the same as before. Trumpism can be defeated, as the good will in both parties oppose his brand of xenophobic vitriol. Bret Stephens gives hope with the likes of Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger … and hundreds of former Republican security and senior officials who signed on to oppose Donald Trump.
Times may be different. Hopefully, history will not repeat itself.
Richard H. Keller, Salt Lake City