For those who survive this, we must also learn from it

There is a tendency among humans to believe we're living at the end of history. In every era of relative peace, we believe that the chaos of history is behind us. That nothing of note will happen again.

It's a naïve belief whenever it happens; it's easy to look down on people who hold it, but god, isn't it appealing? Living, as we do currently, so clearly in the middle of history is brutally painful.* It is agony to wake up every day to events you know will make up the textbooks of your grandchildren.

Do you remember studying World War II in high school? Do you remember wondering how the people who lived in Germany in the 1930s allowed the Nazi Party to take control? Did you maybe read The Wave?

God, I miss being confused about how fascism could be permitted to rise. It's not that I believed everything was fixed in the 90s, when I come from, but it felt like we were just at the finishing things up stage. We didn't have equal marriage yet, but it really felt like the celebrities who kept getting engaged and then saying they wouldn't get married until everyone could had that in hand. We hadn't dealt with climate change but, unlike now, everyone knew we had to.

History doesn't end and it doesn't bend towards progress. It's tidal. Progress is ebbing.