Startling Memories!!!

I just listened to Barack Obama's Labor Day speech to the AFL-CIO in Cincinnati.

The memories that swept over me were unmistakable! They were shaking! It was about 1939. I was edging toward my 11th birthday. The family was gathered around the big round speaker on our old Atwater-Kent radio. From the speaker shrieked a voice. Loud, shrill, punctuated by the screaming cheers of a crowd that seemed to border on hysteria.

The major difference was that today's audio was pretty clear. In 1939, it was distorted by that strange echo effect that resulted from the trans-Atlantic cable which carried the signal.

And of course, in 1939, the speaker screamed, not in English, but in German. The speaker was Adolph Hitler.

It sounded pretty scary to me back then (as it did today). I certainly didn't fully understand what was happening in 1939. But my father did. Just over two decades earlier he and his brother had been in Europe as soldiers in the United States Army. Dad came home, his brother was killed. In 1939, his face reflected the concern he felt.

Listening to Barack Obama today, I realized that, again, we had a leader addressing a concerned people - filling them with hope and change which history proves he cannot deliver. But the crowds in attendance, then and now, were not interested in history. They were not thinking logic or truth. They were interested only in the frenzy resulting when someone in power screams the message in which they have been indoctrinated.

I remembered my father's worried look. I wondered what history would write this time around.

Then I tried hard to stop the process of remembering.