Throughout history, similar conditions have produced similar results. How many wars have been waged from a simple miscalculation? How many leaders who left office in disgrace once enjoyed immense popularity? How many times has the unregulated of the privileged led to misery among the disadvantaged? President Harry Truman put it succinctly when he said, “The only thing you have to learn is the history you do not know.” It is with the prescience of history that I find the current economic crisis and other current conditions foreboding.
    At the end of World War I, the winners—including the United States—invoked untenable conditions on the loser—Germany. Included among those untenable conditions were severe financial penalties. The allies all but emasculated Germany, a people whose core fiber is national pride. Germany sunk into a deep depression, financially as well as emotionally.
    Then along came a little man, a former Corporal in the German army with a funny mustache who had failed at everything he attempted. He churned the bitterness of his personal failure into hate for those he felt denied him of his greatness. He started speaking publically about those people, and he wrote a book about his greatness, and how those people denied Germany of its greatness.
    Adolph Hitler became his nation’s leader by blaming the Jews for all of Germany’s problems. His mantra was: Rid the nation of Jews, and pride and prosperity will be restored. Hitler perfected fear as strategy and as a weapon.
    A recent edition of The Washington Post has reported that the number of hate groups in America is soaring. With the nation going through the worst economic crisis since the ‘30’s, uncontrolled immigration, not to mention the greatest fear plaguing sick minds: a black man in the White House, and conditions are ripe for fear to be used again as a strategy and a weapon.
    It is essential that our new President take us though our many challenges with calm, transparency, and Light. And it is equally essential the media not use fear as a ratings getter, but report events in a straight forward, objective manner.