Musings for this Moment
Of Generations and History, and Generations of History
I remember reviewing budget plans for 2016 late in the fall of 2015. Of course, our controller said, we have scenarios for Brexit, but we’re not taking it seriously. They’re just scenarios.
Five months later, my English husband woke up and exclaimed, “Bloody England.”
I remember the fall of 2016 when I was a relatively new ex-pat in Germany. German colleagues, fascinated by the political machinations of the U.S. and aware of the power of the country in a way Americans do not seem to be, would ask me if I thought Trump could win.
Two months later, my naturalized husband, who had flown to the U.S. to vote for the first time, sent me a text: “I’m sorry for what you’re about to wake up to.”
I remember two years ago when there was a new virus spreading in China, but it was not going to affect our lives and plans.
I remember two months ago, when we watched the Russian army amass forces on the border of Ukraine, somehow believing the power-hungry leader’s assurance that he would not invade the sovereign country.
Based on the last events of the six years, to say nothing of the larger lessons of history, I am surprised that we seemed to be surprised by the Russian invasion. I am overwhelmed with frustration, hopelessness and sadness at our futility as humans, our inability to learn from past mistakes.
It feels like everything I knew growing up has changed. Institutions and offices I trusted are shown to be full of holes. I used to respect our leaders, I used to believe the news, I used to have faith that the future would be better than today. I used to think that despite the mistakes we were making along the way, we were moving in a positive direction.
I had a wonderful history teacher in high school, Mr. Kaufman. It was the ’90s and the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe were crumbling; the countries we knew changed from one night to the next. Mr. Kaufman taught us the stories behind the stories, the causes of the causes that led to wars and destruction. He helped us recognize patterns and showed us dimensions of history that were often overlooked.
As a teenager, I saw the end of the Cold War as a time of hope. I studied Russian. We believed in “pravda” and “glasnost” and “mir.”
That “mir” was short-lived. (Apparently, the “pravda” was too.)
War in the Balkans broke out. For Mr. Kaufman’s disciples, this was not a surprise. History taught us that people want self-determination. History taught us that just because people live near each other does not mean they share the same values, beliefs or religions. History taught us that this particular corner of the world had been fraught with tensions for centuries.
Most of all, history taught us that power — and the struggle for power — is the force behind our wars, our religions and our institutions. And through most of our history, this struggle for power has been waged and won by old white men.
Vladimir Putin was in his late 30s when the U.S.S.R. sputtered its final breaths; Joe Biden was in his late 40s; Volodymyr Zelenskyy was, like me, in his early teens.
Recently, some friends and I talked about a corollary to the main lesson of history — that children always fight against their parents. Children rebel against the power their parents wield over them.
Putin, Biden, Johnson, Scholz — these world leaders hold the post-WWII years and rise of the Cold War in their memories. To date, we children have not been able to overpower our parents. We are, or we feel, outnumbered and outmaneuvered, discounted or invisible.
My generation — Gen X — has produced few leaders on a global scale. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Macron and Trudeau might have been the most visible, but they differ from Zelenskyy. Like another phenomenon of the ’80s, before the rise of “conscious uncoupling” and co-parenting, they act like the children of divorced parents who are trying to get their parents back together.
Zelenskyy is the kid whose parents always expected him to run the family business; it was an unwritten rule that he would follow the rules and do what he was told. Zelenskyy is not willing to do what he is told; he sees a better future for himself and his people, and he is doing whatever he can to secure it.
My favorite sports movie as a teenager was Rudy, the story of the big-hearted undersized walk-on for Notre Dame’s storied football team. Even if the movie had come out yesterday, it would not be much of a spoiler to share that in the final game of his university career, Rudy takes the field for the last plays, and is carried off as a hero.
It is formulaic. It is biblical. It is the classic underdog story that so many of us (Americans, or all cultures?) love.
It is not that much different from the parent-child struggle except that most parents think they know better than their children, having experienced more of life. Most parents try to do the best thing for their children. Meanwhile, children often think their parents are out-of-touch disciplinarians.
Living in Nuremberg, I know people whose fathers and grandfathers fought for Germany in World War II. Understandably, as adults, they have conflicting feelings about their parents: they love them and understand why they joined the fight (there seemed to be few other survivable choices), but cannot excuse their actions.
Nuremberg is famous, or infamous, for its role in Nazi Germany. I live a few kilometers away from the Nazi Party Rally Grounds; I often pass the Courthouse on my runs. Living here, it is hard to forget the lessons of World War II. It is hard to forget that the policy of appeasement allowed Hitler to annex or overtake country after country in Europe, which led him to believe his enemies would never oppose him. Intended to satisfy Hitler’s urge for power, the appeasement policy had the opposite effect, feeding his appetite for even more.
I am a lapsed historian and my memory of political theories is even rustier. I understand the delicate tipping point we are experiencing. I know strategists are working to avoid mutually assured destruction.
At the same time, I cannot help but remember the times in the last decades when my home country has invaded a foreign country in the name of saving democracy, though perhaps the underlying intention was to protect our energy resources or maintain the balance of power.
As the aggressor in this situation, Putin has the power; we are waging an economic war against a man who is giving orders to bomb civilians, nuclear power plants and Holocaust memorial sites. People who spend lifetimes weighing the calculus of war games tell us military action, even closing the air space above Ukraine, could lead to global destruction.
Albert Einstein said, “The world is not threatened by people who are evil, but by those who allow evil.” We see, hear and read stories about people who are standing against evil in this crisis every day. We see, hear and read examples of public companies taking action — action which may impact their financial results — to isolate Putin. We see, hear and read examples of governments reversing policies that had been held for 70 years in response to the invasion.
As an ordinary citizen, it all feels insufficient. Much like Covid, climate change and racial reckoning, it feels like the actions available to us — joining protests, donating money, voicing our support for Ukraine and dissent against the invasion— do not add up to anything significant.
It is not our parents’ fault that they still hold power, that we are holding onto relics of the last century. It is not my generation’s fault that we do not have power. It is our collective fault that we continue to repeat our mistakes, that we do not learn from the past. It is our collective fault that we have not learned how to lead our way out of crises. It is our collective fault that we cannot agree to necessary sacrifices, that we are not willing to suffer a fraction of the discomfort Ukrainian people are suffering right now, in order to solve the biggest problems facing our survival as a species.
Two years ago this week, we knew about Covid, but its effect on our daily lives was minimal. We went out to dinner; we went to parties. I hosted a live panel at work for International Women’s Day. I did not own any face masks.
Almost every day since we have talked about the “new normal.” We have looked forward expectantly to our “return to normality.”
I walked to the market this morning, a pedestrian activity that charms nonetheless. I ambled through a small playground where parents drank coffee while their children played. I saw a couple sitting at an outdoor cafe, wrapped in blankets and winter coats but enjoying the sun on an early spring day.
I was struck by the normalcy of these scenes, the ease with which we were living our lives. I thought of our fellow humans in Ukraine, and how their lives two Saturdays ago likely mimicked ours today. Today, these ordinary citizens are fleeing their homes, sleeping in subway stations or taking up arms to defend their country’s sovereignty.
Russia’s recent history in Syria, their indiscriminate bombing of civilians in cities like Aleppo, provides lessons we should be learning from today. Russia’s bombing of Syrian civilians demoralized the populace and fractured the resistance. The ensuing refugee crisis destabilized Europe. Perhaps Putin hopes these lessons of history will repeat themselves.
Other lessons of history give us reason to hope. If Putin had been my classmate in Mr. Kaufman’s class, he would have learned that there are few examples in history — especially modern history — when invading forces have been welcomed with open arms. We spent weeks in that class studying events and actions from Russia’s history; indeed, invading Russia has precipitated the end of not just one megalomaniac’s power grab but two, Napoleon and Hitler.
Let us all hope that Zelenskyy and his people can be as successful today in repelling a megalomaniac as Russia and its people have been in the past.
