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| picture from britannica.com |
Many people, especially descendants
of navy folk stationed at Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, will never release
from their family stories that tragedy.
The assassination of John
F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963, lives in the minds of baby boomers and other
generations who still demand the unveiling “of what actually happened” though
it may be just as the Warren Commission reported.
I still remember the Kent
State shootings May 4, 1970. That circumstance holds the same personal trauma
as the Kennedy assassination.
Of course, we still
remember, and with “how dare they” personal insult, the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda
attacks.
The January 6th,
2021, attack on the Seat of United States government, the Article I branch of
government, the first and most well-described branch, will continue to be a “day
of infamy” for myself and many others.
Our emotional fixations
to these moments in history are recorded not only in textbooks but also in
personal world-view constructs, affecting our perceptions and judgements not
only about the people guilty of involvement in those evils, but, unfortunately,
also the broader, innocent, populations that they may inadvertently represent.
I am convinced that many
generations of Iranians will carry within their emotional selves the bombings currently
taking place in their land. They will associate those bombings with many
subsequent, though innocent, generations of Americans.
There may be a day when
this war will be over for most of us in the United States. But I suspect that
its effects will reverberate through many generations of Iranians, some of whom
may be inspired to “regain their honor” when we least are prepared.
