A New Year to Face Danger Without Yielding to Fear

Nelson Mandela said:

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”

The turmoil filled year of 2024 has come to an end. Typically, the coming of a new year brings about the hope of better times, but this is different. 2024 was a year that filled the many people with fear and unease, especially with the return of Donald Trump to the Presidency. The world was already filled with wars and threatening more and Trump is now promising that the United States will be an aggressor. His statements over the past week are a cause for great concern, especially when directed at NATO allies.

Trump’s promises of revenge and retribution against “political enemies”, aka American citizens and plans to deport millions of immigrants, even removing the citizenship of naturalized American citizens, and changing the 14th Amendment which declared anyone born in the United States an American citizen more than troubling. His billionaire cabinet appointments coupled with the malignant influence of Elon Musk and other oligarchs threatens democracy and promises misery to most who are not already fabulously well off. Nor can we forget his picks to “protect” the health of the nation, or our national security.

We cannot change what happened in 2024, and things will probably get far worse before they get better. However, we must learn from our experience, to guard against what Trump and his and band of malcontents do, and build a better future. In fact, building a better future and fighting against the forces that threaten freedom and democracy must be our highest priority.

2024 will be remembered and written about by historians, theologians, journalists, and philosophers. Except for historians, most will place their own interpretation on it and then go on to prognosticate about the future.

I am a historian. For me history is not just something dead in the past but a living reality that influences us in everything we do. As such, I think that we need to learn lessons from history and apply that knowledge to what we do now. We do not live in a vacuum, if we did we would be very dusty and always spinning around, but I digress.

We must learn from the past in order to be ready for the future, and avoid the disasters of the past. But the future is unknown and often uncharted. Thus we should do as General George Patton said, “Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.” That is the reason I study history. It is not to give us a laundry list of facts, events, and dates to prove our point but, rather to see how people and nations dealt with things that they either could not or did not foresee.

Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban wrote that “None of us are born into the world we live in.” That is true as we are all born at a specific moment in time, and the world is always changing and changing in ways that will always surprise us. Maybe not some of the events themselves, but certainly the players that make things happen, the places that they happen, and the speed of which they happen. Time stands still for no person.

Yet that being said we cannot erase the past and go back to some point in time where our interpretation of history says that things were better. Such thinking is pure fantasy and is quite delusional. Golda Meir said “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”

So, will not face the future, even the Trumpian dystopia which is to come.

All this being said I think that the wisest thing ever said about the future was by Yogi Berra who wisely remarked “The future ain’t what it used to be.” But then was it ever what it used to be?

Tonight I will usher in the New Eve with Judy and our Papillons, Izzy, Pierre, Maddy, and Sunny. We continue our tradition of watching the films It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and The Great Race.

So tonight to my friends, I wish you the best. I wish you a happy new year, but can only promise a new year.

So in the words of Auld Lang Syne:

And surely you’ll buy your pint cup!
and surely I’ll buy mine!
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

May we safely navigate the dangers of 2025. As Mandela said: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

All the best.

By the way, I am making a special subscription offer. Anyone new subscriber, or current free or monthly subscriber who upgrades to a one year subscription offer $50, or who has a one year subscription that upgrades to Founding member subscription can receive an autographed copy of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory. If you do this make sure that you send me a message with your name and address so I can get it shipped.

Thank you so much for reading and I hope that we can grow together in the looming peril of the new year.