As I was walking my grandson home from school he mentioned something about WWI and I asked him how he knew about WWI, his reply: “Because I am a history nerd. I study it whenever I can. I also know about WWII and The Korean War and The Viet Nam War.” He is 10. The apple does not fall far from the tree, his mother has a BA in History and I have a BA in Liberal Arts and read history text books for fun. I am passionate about history, I LOVE history. Some people can reel off sports statistics, or car changes and designs by year. I can run through the Plantagenet family tree, which is a complex tree with many broken branches and much inter-breeding. I think my passion for history and for politics are conjoined twins. One seems correlated to the other. Instead of spending my time at the gym on weight machines or Zumba classes I climb aboard the treadmill with my tablet and watch documentaries about history- the time flies by.

The similarities are striking and while my particular preference is for the Middle Ages of Britain I am also familiar with Plato and Socrates’ discussion of the four regimes that exist in reality and tend to degrade successively into each other: timocracy, oligarchy (also called plutocracy), democracy and tyranny (also called despotism).  This is a repeating pattern of civilizations. However, as my Western Civilizations professor warned us, “History doesn’t actually repeat, it is more of a variation on themes.” In other words, there will never be another Henry II versus Thomas a Beckett but the betrayal of a trusted friend is an oft repeated story. This is why I enjoy studying history, to learn about the trials and tribulations of people who have come before, their failures and successes, ‘if only...’, how do the results of the past affect the actions of the present. Do we learn from history, yes, sometimes I think we do. With the plethora of sources of information available to us today we can glean wisdom. This is why there is currently a debate in the US about what should be taught in schools, some would like our children to only see our past as a Grimm’s fairy tale of moral lessons where everything turns out ok. I hope we can see how that may not be a healthy way of learning about our country. We need to know ALL of our history, the good and the ugly so that we can understand each other.

The Plantagenet’s were the ‘reality TV’ of the British Middle Ages. To get a wonderful view of life as a member of the family I suggest, “The Lion in Winter” with Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole, this family could have used the services of a family counselor as they define ‘dysfunctional family’.  Henry II was the patriarch of the Plantagenet family, his sons are part of one of the most familiar fairy tales and several movies- Robin Hood. While good King Richard is off fighting the Crusades, little brother Prince John is terrorizing the kingdom. As a result of John’s bad behavior two things happened- there has never been a King John in the British family since his death and Britain has the Magna Carta which is the precursor to our Constitution. Not directly, of course, but the Magna Carta is the tiny seed planted in the minds of people as an idea that there can be rule of law and that leaders are not determined by a god but should be elected by people. It is a long, bloody and convoluted path from there to our Constitution. If you enjoy watching the shenanigans of the Kardashians or the Housewives of various counties I think you would also enjoy the mischiefs of the War of the Roses. These people took their roles as leaders as very serious business and oaths were not made lightly. A friendly business relationship with Henry IV did not entitle one to a similar successful affiliation with his brother, Richard III, in fact, you very well could lose your head. Perhaps that is the attraction of reality TV, we can watch and think, “At least my family isn’t that bad.”

When we read the letters and writings of the past we see that the human experience is much the same, we are born into families, have relationships, have children, have jobs and make a contribution to our culture. It is those the contributions that transcend time and are still popular stories of today, like the influence John Locke had on our Founding Fathers.  They studied history and passionately discussed and struggled to create a document that could withstand the test of time. They were well-read on the events of history and dared to dream of society that could be fair to all citizens, unlike what they had experienced. True, they did not include women and Blacks, that is a job they handed to us. They knew that as perfect as they attempted to make the Constitution, changes would need to be made over time and gave us the tool of “Amendments”. Viewing the amendments we see how omission on their part created a need for changes on our part, some changes were good, like Emancipation and some were bad, like Prohibition. We learned from past mistakes. Amendment is a noun that means: 1. the act of amending or the state of being amended. 2. an alteration of or addition to a motion, bill, constitution, etc. 3. a change made by correction, addition, or deletion. Change is not a bad thing- it means recognizing a problem and correcting. The Founding Fathers expected us to do this. “Let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. What these periods should be nature herself indicates.” Thomas Jefferson.

When my daughter was in college I confess that I would read some of her text books because they interested me, for example: “Slavery By Another Name” by Douglas Blackmon. Did you know that slavery did not end with the Civil War? I did not until 10 years ago. I thought it ended and the slaves were free and they got land and a donkey and everyone lived happily ever after, well, that’s what my high school text book told me. That isn’t what happened. Slavery remained in a different guise, as Jim Crow Laws, until the Second World War when we needed more live bodies to fight. That is when we started to give Black men the ‘opportunity’ to serve their country. Because we don’t learn the beauty and the ugly of our history many White people like me were surprised when we learned that our first Black president was not going to be given the same respect as our other White presidents. Now we have people wondering why Black people are angry- because they weren’t taught honest history, that’s why.

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.” Napoleon Bonaparte. Those writers have primarily been men; white, Christian men. As women have continued to fight for equal rights, and I do mean continue because we are not equal yet, (although we have come a long way) more literature, art, books and writing by women has come into the public arena. No longer does a woman have to write under a man’s name, George Sands, and we are now free to read works written by women. We can attribute discoveries by women to them and not a male acquaintance, like the discovery of the first complete ichthyosaur & plesiosaur by Mary Anning. Because of dedicated female scholars we continue to unearth works about women, for example, the Gospel of Mary, which has been excluded from the bible. 

Currently we are trying to convince young women to seek education in STEM; Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. If we wish female students to pursue this they need to understand from history that our grandmothers and great mothers were not allowed to pursue these subjects, many were not even encouraged to seek education. I have one daughter with a BA in History and another daughter with a BS in Bio-Med because they both pursued their passions and were not told that they could not, they learned from those around them (aunts who are engineers) and from accurate and honest history that females are qualified to study in any subject.

I applaud groups that are guiding women to STEM careers, and I am glad that the leaders in Silicon Valley decided to convince schools in California that every student should undertake advanced math- we need people trained in these fields for our technological future. We also need students to understand history so that they better guide their designs, inventions and studies to include all people. We should not be pursuing engineering studies to the exclusion of the arts and humanities we should be educated in all branches of study. We need engineers who understand the past as much as we need teachers who understand science. History is a compliment to education, it enhances our life by teaching us that while humans have failed we have also succeeded. The saga of the suffragettes is the saga of many groups who are discriminated. Learning the reasons behind the French Revolution enhance our ability to understand the importance of participating in our government. The lessons learned from WWII teach us the danger of discrimination. Reading about the Fall of Roman and the Decline of the British Empire are cautionary tales about over reach of one country over others. We need to learn these things so that we can arrive at the polling booth with an understanding of the potential for bad decisions by unqualified candidates. I hope I have inspired you to read about history, that is not just about remembering dates, but about what we can learn about our past to create a better future.

Previous mention was made in this space about the political pole-shift between the Democratic and Republican Parties. Abraham Lincoln was the first to be elected president under the aegis of the Grand Old (Republican) Party. The rebellious Southern Confederates, in essence, were former Democrats. It was only natural for those who previously were human chattel to glom onto the liberating Republicans. This grateful dedication would prove to be to their detriment. The Black Laws and the Ku Klux Klan all but eliminated African American participation in the Southern voting process. The great northward emigration of African Americans from the Southern States took along with it the imprimatur of Lincoln’s Republican Party of salvation.

Enter the Great Depression. Republican President Herbert Hoover is defeated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). With his New Deal and plethora of alphabet agencies, FDR became the savior for the downtrodden of all races. He captured hearts and votes from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Thus,the Solid South was fortified by the cement of any amount of Black participation that happened to squeeze in between the cracks. That is how it remained for the whole of the unprecedented, Rooseveltian four terms.

FDR expired just before the end of World War II. His Democratic successor Harry S. Truman found himself at the helm of the newly launched USS Pax Americana, which would be welcomed in many needy ports around the devastated, post-war world. With the U.S. now evangelizing for democratic republics to replace Old World colonization, African Americans in the South began to clamor for inclusion in the election process. (This writer was with a group of friends, participating in the atmosphere outside Philadelphia’s Convention Hall as Truman was being nominated to run against Thomas Dewey.) As African Americans slowly made progress in the South, it still remained faithfully Democratic for all involved.

The prestige and politically middle-of-the road attitude of Dwight D. Eisenhower was much-too-much for elite Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. There was a pitiful, non-parade for Stevenson down sparsely populated Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. Stevenson drove by, waving to passersby who seemed to wonder who he was. (This writer was a witness to that spectacle, and later, asa member of the choir directed by the prestigious Hall Johnson, we were invited to sing at the Eisenhower nomination convention in that same city.) John F. Kennedy still commanded a full-court press of Democrats of all stripes. Lyndon Baines Johnson was an overwhelming Democratic victor over the hapless Barry Goldwater who, despite his invention of the GOP’s race-baiting dog-whistle won only deep-South states and his native Arizona.

Richard Nixon came bouncing back on the national stage, re-working Goldwater’s Southern Strategy into his own image. He extended and improved upon the noxious dog-whistle in Republican politics. The strategy included the undisguised innuendo of painting African Americans as lazy, dependent, criminal and with other negative terms redolent of ghetto-laced rhetoric with which disaffected Whites would be lured into the Republican Party. It worked; Nixon cleaned the boards. After the Watergate mess, Jimmy Carter was able to bring the Democrats back for a short stint. Ronald Reagan, borrowing from Nixon’s Southern Strategy, continued the dog-whistle war against welfare queens and the continued progress of African Americans in the political system. The dissolution of the Solid South continued. The racially liberal attitude of George W. Bush hushed the dog-whistle in presidential politics, but by then the practice was well established in local political parlance. Whistlin’ Dixie was heard throughout the land.

With the election of Barack Obama, the dog-whistle became a symphony, with each instrument of the orchestra contributing to the central theme of, Get your black ass our of our White House! Such a violation of natural order could not be controlled simply by whistling Dixie; a new Dixie had to be created. While the throngs were cheering the new president in the icy capital, Republican governors met in secret conspiracy in order to devise methods on how, through state legislatures – not on how to increase voting for the Republican Party – rather, on how to decrease voting for the Democratic Party. They have passed voting laws that negatively target African Amercans and other minorities, young people and college students. The results are now self-evident around the country.

With these last mid-year elections, the Southern Strategy was complete. The former, Solid Blue South turned completely red, with every state singing in unison:

…We’re glad we’re red in Dixie,

Hooray, hooray.

We’ll live and die in Dixie…

*****     *****     *****

There was this guy over sixty,

Sneakin’ around like a pixie.

He said, “By my gun…” –

When asked what he’d done—

“…Nuthin’ – just here, whistlin’ Dixie.”

For Part 7 click HERE

I am sitting in this office in a burnt out Berlin while my men are going to the wall. I am powerless to do anything at all. They would expect my assistance. I have none to give. These were days that I thought all was gone. I hung on to the fact that all men are open to corruption. This is my talent. Our days were not at their end. Someone would do a deal with us. The situation is still open I thought. I am at my best when I am confronted with adversity. I was working without break. Alone. I was surrounded by a building full of information and it was useless. I felt helpless. I have lived in this jungle of a country for too long. Without contacts. Without any network. To have lived in this cesspit and called it home has made me feel disgust. I cannot breathe.

I imagine this city as it had once been. Ten years ago. The beauty of Berlin had the power to oppress those of limited imagination. It still made all the cities we conquered look insignificant. To be in Berlin was to feel a man again. A man better than other men. Now it was in flames. As far as they eye could see. The buildings I had loved since I was a child ripped apart as if some great giant had held the city in his hand and shaken it all over the place. Emptying it of everything. Including people. It was an unimaginable sight.

I cannot see his face. I saw him not long ago. I'm certain. I can't sleep. I am continually disturbed by all sorts of sounds. I cannot hear myself. The heart is irregular. Covered in sweat. I was put to good use. I put myself to such good use. Ten years. A mammoth task. In ten years I had done to the chosen people what no man, order, or nation had ever had the strength to do. Not one of their number on the continent would have been untouched by my hands. I had entered their homes. I had emptied their families. A father here. A mother there. A grandmother. A daughter and son. Whole generations and families perished. I closed the door on their future. I turned their past against them. I turned them against each other. I chopped every branch of their culture from the tree and left them on the ground to be collected as firewood to burn the heretics. It will take a million years to rebuild their culture. Perhaps never. There can be no question about that. No question. No devil in their holy books was quite like me.

The chosen people of today are different people. Not the same as the ones I did business with. Certainly not. They had built a home where they could despise others as they despised themselves. The only home they deserved was in the camps. Here they had a community. A community like no other. Here the Jew of every type was one. Half Jew was all Jew as far as I was concerned. From each corner the Jew was brought out meet his long lost cousins. Never before such a congress of Jews. They only meet in disaster. It is in anguish that they find their brotherhood. In the chambers they went as one enormous family. They were one big family in the pit. Their homes are the burial grounds of Europe we dug for them. Ash bone and earth. I cannot breathe.

All the time I’m catching my breath. A pain across my chest will not go away. I feel as if I need a walking stick to stand straight. They are going to do away with me. I know them. I can hear them. Their smell. I know it. They are here. They cannot hide from me. I know they are here. I am a master of their trade. I know they're here. They cannot hide from Heimmann. I will not walk to them. As they marched happily to the furnace. No. They'll find me too much trouble. They know that from their fathers. From books. They'll know what they get when they capture me. Why do they come now? Why now? They have left me alone. They could have come here before. They now want me. What use am I to them? An old man in the dock. They want me.

A young man has come crying to me. He's no older than eighteen. Perhaps younger. New to the dirty uniform. He told me it had all come to an end. This young man. He had been at the bunker. A guard. They shot themselves four hours ago he said. His death and that of his bride did not disturb me. I remember staring out the window at the searchlights thinking that none of them can face the end. He who faces the end can watch history do the striptease. This man must know the end. I then turned on the boy in a fit of rage. Grabbed him by the coat and swung him against the door. I screamed at him that they had left us. Too scared to hold the flag. We are betrayed at every corner I told him. The swine never sleep in their own fifth. They leave us to embrace the end. I was still holding on tightly to the young man. This boy. It was clear that he was frightened out of his wits. He didn't know where to turn. I wanted to hurt this boy as I have never wanted to hurt someone in my life. I was holding this child to blame for what was happening. I remember screaming that I needed more time to carry out my task. I was screaming it out so loudly that it seemed to drown the room in sound. The boy couldn't have known what I was talking about. Just another official going mad before his eyes. He said nothing while I was holding him. He was sweating through the coat with fear. I let him go. Find a leader. Find a leader. I shouted to him as he fled the building to the dust and rubble of the Berlin streets.

I am sweating. I am not in fever. These clothes are sticking to me. I can smell them. When are they going to come? I cannot leave here. I cannot leave this room. I cannot go. Everything is closing in on me. I have left school and I have begun working for the Jews. How I hate them. They disgust me with their babble. I'm tired of being in their presence and having to listen to them talk in their strange tongue. They will never expect me to understand their chatter. I will get down to their level of cunning. I have just begun a class at the synagogue in learning Hebrew. I'll surpass this swine in my knowledge. I will master their mongrel tongue. I join the class. Telling them I want to convert. Unusual for a German and especially for someone so young the rabbi told me but we will do our best for you. It is important that you understand us better. We are your brothers in these hard times. There is so much in our culture that will benefit you - he said - as he passed his hands through my hair.

I am sitting in a class. The rabbi comes to me. He pats me on the back telling me he enjoys the presence of such an earnest young man in his class. You have long ignored the beauty of our language he tells me. I feel nothing but contempt for this miserable specimen. His condescension disgusts me. His pedantic manner. I want to give this one a slap for good measure. Yet I sit there - the obedient student attentive to his master. I look around the class. Watch them. Observe them. In detail. They are all younger than me. They set about their learning with a certain viciousness. It is the viciousness of those doomed to exile. The boys grudgingly accept my presence in the class. You can see on their faces the loathing of all things German. We are asked questions by the rabbi and I am always first to answer. The answers are exact and thorough. The rabbi is aghast with the speed of my learning. It seems to worry other student more than it worries him. He seems quite bemused. Further I ask him questions that the others are too frightened to ask. They despise me.

One night I remember in particular. The rabbi had set an exam for the end of the year. He had brought some elders to watch over us. There are about six of them. They walk around the class and each one spends a long time staring over my shoulder. The students stare at me with open contempt. I am enjoying this. I go about my business. After we are finished the rabbi takes our paper and convenes into the next room with the elders. This room is a steam house of hatred. One of the boys bares his Jewish race. The others cackle so loudly that one of the elders sticks his head out the door. Their stupidity does not bother me. It is their arrogance. An arrogance that is steeped in their feelings of superiority. That their village culture is superior. Though the rabbi is a good teacher there is more than a hint of this attitude in him. The elders walk back into the room with the rabbi. He awards the prizes for the year. Fees for a Jew college in the center of town. It is awarded to one of the others. Then he gives a short speech about my development. That I have much to teach the others. I have set a good example. My stomach turned as he spoke. A machine in turmoil. My body felt sensate. He started to say that he welcomed my attendance next year.

I climbed up on to the top of my desk. The room stood still. I began speaking clearly and loudly. I gave them a lecture on the degeneracy of European Jewry. At first they did nothing. They were in a state of shock. I could feel myself weakening at the knees with all the tension. I was throwing their knowledge back at them. Some of the students started shouting at me. I was calling all of them to task. You have caused your own problems I said. They are only beginning I told them. I took no notice of their vile remarks. The elders started towards me. They were furious but I could see that they didn't know what to do with this faithful gentile who came regularly to their class every week for two years. They were asking me if I was sick but I fended them off with my feet and I yelled at them even louder. The rabbi was in tears. I could see him. I was getting hoarse. You are parasites - I yelled. You destroy everything you touch. I can see the looks of fear on their faces. The elders were furious and the boys had stopped laughing. The rabbi stood there crying.

Now they've all flooded back. Back to their old tricks. Parasites. Who is there to fight them? They are the ringleaders of any trouble. That's certain. Their names will be on security files. No doubt. They cannot keep their hands out of trouble. That's certain. There is no one to fight them. Our young have failed to learn the lesson we taught and they mix with this scum. In every sphere. Social cultural and political. Our best marry them and even work for and with them. This fifth is born to trouble. If it is not there - they will invent it. Who fights them? Not a soul. The old soldiers bitch but they will work for them on Mondays. Slowly and surely they return position of power again. There is no place too far away for them to start their mischief. I can sense them. Where are they? I am waiting for them. They know I'm here. I know they're here. When will I be free of them? They will drown out my voice with their babble. They won't be happy until they have me hanging from a rope spilling my guts out to them. That's what they want.

I have not seen people for days but I can tell that they are here. I can hear them. They surround me. They'll want to parade me. I'll not slip a pill down my throat. They will hear my voice loud and strong. I will stand on the desk again. I will let Eckstein's sons know the truth of their misery. I'll tell them. They want my skin. I don't have anything other than that. My skin and my memories. All else is gone. I know what they want. These toy soldiers of Israel. They want to eradicate the past. They don't want the past staring them in their faces. They don't want it ringing in their ears reminding them of their failure. They want to wipe the past out. That's what they want. To forget it. They have won the war but the battle continues. I know that better than this scum. Why is there so much noise? I can't hear myself think. I desire nothing but peace. I want silence. The noise is intense. When will it stop? I'm finding it difficult to get my words out. I need to talk. I need to talk.

I had walked all over Berlin. I could see evidence of the Russians. These savages were coming to devour us. There was no doubt about that. They had made that promise. Their commissars had said they wanted to bring me back in a cage so that the Slav nation could pour its contempt on me as I passed their way. They wanted to torment me. They wanted to make a meal of me. They were not warriors. They were a rabble of lunatics led by a madman. Their conduct was beyond human comprehension. I had seen reports from the East. They do not know civilization. The Russians like a prize and I was going to be that prize. Stalin had personally vowed that I would be brought back to face the full fist of proletarian fury. This madman. They were making forays into the outskirts of the city. We could always strike a deal with the Americans or the British but you could not do a deal with these subhumans. They only wanted one thing. Revenge. That is the goal of a simple nation. I didn't want to be at the door when they opened it. An old man.

A friend of the family had told me one morning many weeks ago that the way the Russians fought was unimaginable. This man told me what he had gone through. He said that on one particular front they stopped fighting for two days after a very heavy engagement. This was most unusual for them. They usually moved forward in human waves no matter what the cost would be. On this front they stopped for two days. Extreme tension. The army knew that they had to prepare for an onslaught. They fought with increased vigor with every onslaught as if they had an endless source of man and machinery. Nothing could be found out about their plans. They seemed prepared for a massive air strike because they had amassed a battery of anti-aircraft lights. Our generals had moved the troops back fearing an immediate human wave descending on them. They moved ten miles away. There was no reaction from the Slav mass. This inaction struck fear into many hearts not least the old man who should never have been on the front. He was no stranger to battle though. He had been a career soldier and had seen much fighting in his time. The army had been his life. Prepared to fulfill his duty to the State but he said he had never felt such fear. The silence. Then at three one morning an artillery bombardment began. A few moments later a massive battery of antiaircraft lights - he felt they had massed every light that they possessed - were pointed towards them - directly. You cannot imagine what it was like he told me. It was like suns from every planet in the universe had been centered on this small piece of earth. And the noise. The bombardment went on for hours. On and on. It seemed like it would never end. The light and the noise. As if some god had decided to grasp the earth and shake it until night had gone from the sky forever. It sounded and felt for all the world that some god had unleashed his fury on us the old man said. It drove men mad. They had no idea what to do.

The population of this area was running about like creatures in a farmyard who were being prepared for slaughter. They were running into walls. Into each other. Thousands and thousands of people. Soldiers and civilians. Running all over the place like lunatics let loose. No discipline. His eyes. His head. His stomach could not take the strain. He and others were involuntarily evacuating their bowels. They were wetting themselves. Crying. He had never heard such crying. Ever. It was ironic given that they were too far away from the bombardment for it to do any physical damage where they were. It made it worse he said. No one understood what was happening. No one. They all thought that the end had come. Field Marshall and private. They were trapped in a hall of light and sound. This was the end he thought. The rest of their moments would be like this. There would be no release.

When after many hours it had finished - this old man looked around him and he could see that all the buildings were left standing. Not one of them had been touched. The people. He could see people as he had never seen them in all his years. Lost. They looked eternally lost. Lost somewhere in the light. There was little motion in them. Minute gestures. Whatever fight had existed in these people was lost in the light. I had known him since I was a child. He would show me photographs of him in uniform and in battle. He took me to museums that commemorated the wars he had fought. This was no desk ridden drunk. This man was borne with iron and steel instead of bone. He was found outside my office in the back seat of his car with a bullet in his head shortly after we had talked. He had shot himself. I have not been able to get rid of his voice. This voice.

The work had to be done. The tasks were greater than the present hour. Goals of a higher nature than could be prescribed for this or that time. I had no news. What news I had horrified me. This or that camp had been taken over. This or that group had surrendered. Men wandering the nation in search of leadership they could not find. I had spent a decade building up such a notation and filing system unparalleled in modern history. We could control occupied Europe on the information alone. Now nothing could be done. Useless. Timetables. Schedules. Deadlines. No one to administer them. Nobody to carry them out. I was working with a team of young boys and old men. I could feel them mocking me. Useless. Everything was collapsing. What could be done? No one could follow in my footsteps. I became very ill. I could not eat. My headaches grew worse. I felt nausea as soon as I woke up when I could get some sleep. My waking hours were spent on planning. All manner of detail. Continual planning. Neither a leadership to defer to nor any subordinates to be taught. Nobody. Dates had to have names. Notes had to have comments. I was alone. Only I could carry out the task. It was impossible.

I wanted to wipe Jewry off the face of the earth. Now circumstances would lead them to prosper. I spent days as I never had. Two weeks I wandered the city. Our enemies had not won yet everyone had surrendered. Every day. All day. I walked. Streets full of combatants and civilians who had no ideas and no intentions. I was amongst that number. What could I do? The faces of this nation that ten years ago had mirrored our ascendancy now mirrored the collapse. Falling apart. Burning. Shells. The uniform of my office was recognized by a few people. They had lost caring. They came up to me in their madness asking for food and shelter. There was no food and no shelter. Rank didn't protect you from deprivation. I had lost my feeling for them. I walked past them as if in a trance. In the middle of the day not far from my office I saw a group of soldiers playing cards with scraps of paper. Half out of their uniforms. Covered in muck. They had not bothered to clean up. It was a form of Russian roulette. The one who lost would have to shoot the winner. One of the old men who was staying in my office told me that they ate each other. He said they didn't want to be supper for the Russians. They were reduced men. Hardly men at all.

The bloodletting suffered by France this year is horrendous and inhumane. The perpetrators should meet full judgment for their heinous acts.

France, just as other great European colonial powers and the United States, is finding that it cannot escape its history:

· The U.S. is learning that the rug under which it has swept the embarrassing remnants of its history has become worn and tattered, exposing those discarded shreds.

· Great Britain is finding out that an empire upon which the sun never used to set can become quite tiresome once the sun finally goes down.

· It took Spain almost half a year to reach its remote colony, "Las Islas Filipinas," named for Felipe II. The kingdom that once ruled most of the American Continent, today is one of the poor PIGS of the European Union, struggling to beat off starving denizens from its former African holdings.

France recently had lost Haiti. Napoleon practically made a gift to Thomas Jefferson of what would become the huge center of the U.S. map. Those were the fertile lands France had intended to be the breadbasket for its rich sugar island.

By 1815, Napoleon was finished. In 1830, France was revolution-weary and in decline. It decided to get a new start by transferring French life and agriculture to an area of North Africa known as, "Algeria." First, it had to bend that Arabic/Islamic populace to its colonial will. The battle was bloody, but eventually the Algerians buckled under a superior military force.

When, "Pepe LeMoko: says, "Meet me at the Casbah," he is referring to an impenetrable part of Algiers, the capital of Algeria. After one hundred years, Algeria had become francophone and steeped in French culture. It was ready grist for the nascent Hollywood film mill. As it was the wont of the movies in the area of White Supremacy, the public received only part of the story. The society the French created in Algeria placed themselves on the top and the dark Algerians on the bottom. These latter began to reside in the motherland, where they remained on the bottom – where they still find themselves today!

After World War II, a strain of independence movements ran rampant among the former European colonies. It took Algeria from 1954 to 1962 to wrench its independence from France. The battle was bitter, bloody and brutal, on both sides. The bitter aftertaste runs in today's headlines. France has the largest Muslim population in Europe.

A few years back, Paris literally was burning with a multitude of cars set ablaze by Muslim youths from a ghetto in Paris, where the police dare not enter without prior notice. This weeks-long phenomenon should have been a warning. This ghetto exists because Arabs – Muslim or not – are not welcome to live elsewhere. These are French citizens, born, reared and educated in France. They are unable to gain decent employment, regardless of qualification. They have no hope of being accepted or advancing in France's institutions.

Along comes the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). Who best to tap this long-simmering, still-in-your-face injustice? Who better to supply the weapons desired to seek vengeance for countless decades of hurt. They are French in culture and language, but are also Arab in language and culture, and Muslim as well. They are pissed-off ready to utilize the, "new religion," that new sense of worth, to turn upon those who consider them as worthless. The ghettos of France and next-door Belgium are ready recruiting fields for ISIS, as can be noted in the news.

Thus it is, France. You cannot change the past, but you certainly could make a stab at saving your ass by changing the present!

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A Frenchman, one day, met a man

Who said, "I can do what you can."

"Why not, said the Frog;

"You are not a dog."

"Then, why disdain my non-sun tan?"