Dear Lucinda, Lucien and Lucas,
Perhaps the only thing worse at this time than scaring you would be not scaring you enough.
Your world of Instagram and TikTok, where fun can be had with each like or swipe, is on the cusp of a radical shift.[1]You’ve already received my take regarding their dangers, but I would be beyond suspicious of any social media platform owned by a Chinese company. What you may call paranoia, I’ll call … Continue reading
The world is about to get serious.
The world I grew up in had America as its moral leader. The one that awaits you could well be sculpted by the regimes in China and Russia.
That world is not only radically different; it is a threat to most of the things you hold dear that, dare I say it, you’ve taken for granted.
Freedom, my children, freedom. Freedom to think and speak for yourself. To practice your own religion (including non-religion). To vote for and thus choose your leadership. Freedom to inquire.
Taking things for granted is understandable. Not acting when history calls is altogether different. And history may well soon call.
Beware the status quo
With the news coming out of Russia and Ukraine and our awareness of China and its aims on Taiwan and Hong Kong we see that these powers intend to go well beyond their current borders.
Those countries are merely foreshadowings for, yes, a larger World War that, yes, could very soon be upon us.
A danger lies not in Dad’s seeming paranoia but in our potential passivity.
If there’s one more value to recall it’s this one: Pay attention to the status quo. That is where true stupidity and danger lurk.
World War II was preceded by a status quo, a willingness for other powers (most notably Britain and France and the United States) to allow not only the Nazis’ abominable actions against the Jews but Hitler’s invasion of countries like Austria and Czechoslovakia.
Hitler was testing what Vladimir Putin in this very moment, with China watching, is testing: Do these stooges have the guts to act? Or can we get away with re-drawing the world order and, when it suits our aims, killing countless others?
History is about to call
All of this brings me to you.
These events that I describe occur in a future. It is a future, rapidly encroaching, that will be shaped by you. And you have a simple choice before you.
You can be turned into a stooge by social media (which those other powers would love) or you can educate yourselves[2]Learn history. Watch a documentary. If ambitious, pick up a book. Read a newspaper, not your news feed, but an actual newspaper. and then those around you and make your voices heard to our leaders, letting them know well before things get out of hand what you believe, what you stand for and, above all, what you expect.
This is not the time for peace-loving anti-war hippie propaganda. For fallacious sentiments such as “It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber.”
It is a time for critical thinking and action. This is now a fight. A fight for the future that could well make up the rest of your lifetime.
History is about to call. My deepest hope is that when it does you will be ready.
Notes, etc.
↑1 | You’ve already received my take regarding their dangers, but I would be beyond suspicious of any social media platform owned by a Chinese company. What you may call paranoia, I’ll call social responsibility. |
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↑2 | Learn history. Watch a documentary. If ambitious, pick up a book. Read a newspaper, not your news feed, but an actual newspaper. |