I’m lucky enough to both be old enough, and to have taken the opportunity to ask, some now dead people some questions.
I’m also lucky enough that my family was integrated enough that some personal histories and stories survived in some detail.
It also needs to be stressed at this point that, for example, WW2 looks a lot different to an allied serviceman who probably never set foot in mainland Europe before enlisting, and some poor chump born and raised in Baccarat or somewhere similar.
WW1, WW2, the Great Depression, the “Communist emergency” in Malaysia, Gulf War 1, Zimbabwe, etc… in a couple of cases I didn’t have to ask anyone, my knowledge was firsthand.
The questions?
- Could you tell it was coming?
- Why didn’t you do something?
Q1 always got you are variation of “do you think we were fucking stupid… of course we could fucking see it coming”
Q2 was the interesting one, “like what, the fuckers who had the most to lose were the first to sell us all out”
In reality there were many variations on a theme, and many absolutely fascinating stories, I thought my own family’s stories were interesting and exotic until I started asking these questions, then I realised they were not, shades of the chinese curse about living in interesting times…
They had one thing in common, Barons, historically speaking it doesn’t matter if they are feudal barons, robber barons, corporate barons, financial barons, mining barons, shipping barons, political barons, they all did the same thing, which was pursue their own agenda, everyone else was just collateral damage.
Question 1 was the answer given BY people who for whatever reasons, found it very difficult to adapt to the changing climate when the barons moved some pieces on the chessboard, if in the good times everything you have is tied up within a 5 mile radius of where you are, and suddenly upping sticks and moving 500 miles away sounds like a doom laden nightmare, then when the bad times loom on the horizon what are you gonna do?
Question 2 was the answer given ABOUT people who probably could have upped sticks and moved 500 miles away, and taken the loss in wealth and status and security from being a question 2 person to a question 1 person… but rather than take that loss chose to stay in the game and sell out to the new boss, and call it “adapting”.
Question 1 is a question that many people are starting to discuss openly.
Resource wars are nearly upon us, cf the yanks landing troops in corfu etc etc etc
