Marching for YOU Part 1

In no way do I want to turn this into a political blog.  I don't identify with any strong political party or ideology.  I just love people.  I am going to continue to document my recent experiences, as I always do.

I want to start this post by telling you about my recent experience with Dave's grandfather, our Pop Pop, who is 93-years-old.  About a month ago, we brought Pop Pop to the WWII museum.  Do you remember that war?  It was 1939-1945...only just over 70 years ago.  Not a long time, right?  Pop Pop is a WWII veteran.  And by veteran, I mean that he was a Naval Aviator, as well as Naval Intelligence later in life.  He flew in this war.  He didn't test planes here in the states, he flew IN the war.  He was the pilot, as well as the man that controlled the torpedos.  He had a radio control man to his rear/side right and a gunman to his rear.

So when you walk into the WWII museum and you are a vet, you get a special badge which marks you as a celebrity.  Pop Pop had many, many people come up and thank him.  When we went to the theater to watch the movie with the museum, Pop Pop was announced and given a standing ovation.

I want you to reflect on this, as I did in these precious hours with Pop Pop.  There was a great war against tyranny that has living survivors.  That means this war was so close to our lifetime it is still part of living human beings.

During this time there was also great sufferings and travesties of populations due to racism.  There was a lot of looking the other way and there was a lot of denial.  There was also a LOT of support for two very horrible human beings in Germany and Japan.  Recently our bookclub has read several time piece books around WWII.  I am learning more than I ever did in school about this horrible time.

Let me remind you again- this was only 70+ years ago.  As most of us are between the ages of 30-50, 70 years doesn't seem that long, now does it?  There was horrible, horrible, horrible tyranny only 70+ years ago with the rights of many, many people taken away very slowly and in a way that was unnoticeable to an entire world.  Let that sink in.  There were millions of people being slaughtered, and the rest of the world didn't know it.

I hope we can all agree that leaders matter and people matter.  We can also agree that we are not exempt and we don't get a pass just because we live a few years later in the history of human kind.  It is not as though these sort of things can't happen to us.  There is nothing about the advancement of humankind that says you can't make mistakes and can't repeat mistakes.  The point is NOT to repeat mistakes, but we certainly can.  What an insult to people like Pop Pop and all of the men and women of that generation who fought for our freedom if we choose to think otherwise.

None of this is to say that I see impending genocide in our country by the millions.  But I do simply want to state that went I spent this day with Pop Pop, the impact was so great that I couldn't help but feel very close to this period of time.  I left with a great understanding that my past 38 years of life and many others have been extremely sheltered, and it might make our generation think things like this would never happen now.  It would be a mistake to think that way.