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Under Dark Clouds

We don't choose the age we live in...rather, the age chooses us...enveloping, dominating, shaping our destinies - the sheer immensity of it all, the overwhelming scope, the global reach, the unavoidable impact - like the air we breathe - like a horrifying weather event - no choice for most but to endure these "storms" of history - living through wars, pandemics, upheavals, famines, revolutions, economic downturns, malaise,  lost decades, years of austerity, autocracies, dictatorships, purges, reprisals,  repression,  pogroms, displacements, mass migrations, expulsions, coups, abdications, guerrilla wars, killings, genocides - these "dark clouds" that take up so much of history for so many...(think: Czarism, Bolshevism, Great War,  Fascism, Great Depression, Franco-ism,  Stalinism, Hitlerism, World War, Cold War, Peronism, Maoism....) and oppressive, unwanted, annoying tyrants, autocrats, generalissimos, monarchs, premiers, prime ministers, presidents, people's councils, parliamentary mediocrities, zealots, fanatics, gray-haired bureaucrats,  countless "heads of state" that no one in their right mind would choose to govern over them (!) -  leading us to wonder what counts as "clear sky" -where on the globe and when, which years and what exactly and for how long (?) Are there recoveries, restorations, renewals...Do people find solace in the wake of those afore-mentioned catastrophes?? Does progress happen here and there - albeit less dramatically?  ....Are there equivalent periods of "normalcy" where we don't feel dwarfed or defined by noxious political climates that blow overhead ...? 


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