LIVING HISTORY

The premier quarterbacks are the ones who, when they fade back, have this gift of somehow seeing and sensing the entire field of play. All in an instant, all as if in slow motion. That's what is meant by "seeing things in context." And that's the gift only a few of us have when playing in game called life...!

News in the media and blather in Washington are usually here-and-now rhetoric. Saying things without ever understanding how these things fit into the large screen. For instance, all the disastrous "firsts" today are hardly first-time events with only here-and-now meaning. Consider them. Terror...? Think of living on an isolated 19th farm near Indian country. Failing economy...? Think of all the booms-turned-busts throughout our nation's history right up to the Crash of 1929. Angry politicians...? Think of the pre-Civil War days when Senators often carried hidden sidearms during their bitter floor debates.

And talking about arms, as we read the tragic deaths of hundreds of our nation's warrior-sons, remember the hundreds of thousands who died at Gettysburg, Flanders Fields, and Normandy. So as we give vent to our anti-government, populist frustrations, remember these same furies of hatred were also unleashed against Washington, Jackson, Lincoln and FDR. Many of us working from scripts written and shouted generations ago.

No, such previous failures and furies are nothing to be proud of. But they can remind today's doomsayers that we've struggled down these very same paths before. Our times have no monopoly on anger; no exclusive on graft, corruption and failed promises; and no lock on foretelling our apocalypse.

We're still here. As are so many other imperfect civilizations that have survived the very same traumas and tragedies. A reason to feel good about ourselves...? Not really. But maybe a reason to fade back and pass judgment in the long light of history.