Sworn to Secrecy: Secrets of War

We humans seem instinctively wired for "what-concerns-me&mine-in- the-present", and, understandably so, since the day-to-day survival of each of us depends mainly upon dealing with immediate challenges and problems rather than reflecting upon the challenges involved in events which occurred before we were even born. While I as a sixty- year- old might find it amazing that a seventeen-year-old scarcely knows about Hitler or Stalin, I'm sure that those who were sixty when I was seventeen were equally incredulous that any seventeen- year-olds then were ignorant of Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas II. Most of us are busy enough with the circumstances of life in the era in which we are born to see any need to study history.

However, that said, it's a knowledge of history that can provide from-an-unexpected-perspective both hope and tranquility. Because, a study of history makes clear that none of the "evils" nor issues we face in the present are anything essentially new to humanity, and that, despite history showing that humanity isn't getting qualitatively better, history also shows that humanity is not at all getting qualitatively worse. People and situations have always been "this bad", yet, humanity is still here plodding along.

This series makes clear that people and situations today are no worse than people and situations were fifty and seventy-five years ago. For example, as this series evidences, US politicians, presidents, and military and government leaders served their personal agendas and smiled while blatantly lying to the US citizenry and the world then no less than they do today. US government used whatever technology was available then to spy on its own citizens and on other nations, and did so under the justification, "defending US interests". US corporations interfered in the governments of other nations when they felt their profits threatened. Words and phrases were deliberately crafted and manipulated by government and businesses in order to discredit competitors and malign those who disagreed with policy. The US public lived in fear then too, no less and perhaps moreso than the fear felt today. And yet, after all that and more, neither the US nor the world "ended". Despite it all, humanity manages to keep its head above water and continue on.

This series affirms that "nothing is new under the sun." Its scrutiny of history demonstrates that it's possible for humans to create some shade for ourselves at times. But, more importantly, this series impresses that the glare isn't any worse than ever, and so gives reason not to despair despite that glare being relentless. In spite of ourselves, humanity survives and presses onward.