Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
June 28, 1914, the Coincidence Coordinators [CCs] finally got a belly full of a particularly venal form of aristocratic, dynastic and imperialistic exploitation of world populations. They pulled the trigger on the first, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, and started a ball rolling that didn’t end until the Berlin Wall went down in the 1990s. Maybe didn’t actually end then.
But one of the problems with WWI was nobody could figure out what it was all about, so they couldn’t pick a direction and head there, cut out all the middle men. That’s why WWI didn’t end until the USSR packed up its tents and left eastern Europe all the way back to Moscow. Told them all to go, and sin no more. Here’s the keys to this stupid wall we built in Berlin.
Certainly the dynasties are still around because human beings are creatures of habit. There are still Kennedys and Bushes and possibly a Roosevelt-or-two hanging around threatening to rear their ugly heads. But the last Century killed off an amazing host of parasites with names such as Romanov, Hapsburg, Magyar, Hirohito, Stalin, to name a few.
The only WWI museum in the US, the National WWI Museum in KC, says that while they’re going to have a lot of special displays and ceremonies between June 22, and June 28, they aren’t celebrating. Standard cliché of “There’s nothing to celebrate in war.”
In one sense they’re right. Damned shame all those commoners had to die fighting wars for aristocrats. But when you think about it, all those dead Romanovs, Magyars, Kennedys have given rise to some opportunities nobody’s likely to take advantage of. But the opportunity is still there to hang the rest from lamp posts.
Didn’t do much long-term good when the French did it way back in the day, but maybe they weren’t thinking big enough.
Probably not, though. This guy in the White House now might as well be named Bush or Kennedy for all the difference between him, them, and the ones named Clinton-was, and Clinton wannabe.
Maybe some black hand organization lurking around out in the bushes will rally around the flag, gather up all the Post Office workers, rooftop snipers and school killers and explain to them they’re killing the wrong people.
I expect if that doesn’t happen something equally appalling will, and I’m damned glad I’m not likely to have to try to live through it. 20th Century was a piece of cake from where I was sitting.
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 
Hi Jules,
Isn’t that century still continuing in the Near East, e.g. in Syria and the Iraq? Ans aolso in the Iraeli/Palestinians conflict?
Have a good one,
Pit
Hi Pit. The century might have to last a few hundred years to outlast itself. Gracias, J
I concur in the notion this seems to be a more-than-hundred years’ war.
Hi Ed. I’m guessing war is just one of the by-products spinning off as the real item moves down the assembly line. Gracias, J
OJ, it might just be a case of a missing “I”, but the Berlin Wall was a construct of the Cold War and was built in 1961 to stop “illegal emigration” from the EDR (East Germany) to the West. It had nothing to do, really, with Ferdinand and the start of WWI.
Thanks for a good read. Hope the PT does the job for you.
Hi Wil: I entered the army during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, so I’m acutely aware of the history and events you speak of. I’d say WWI began with the killing of Ferdinand and didn’t end until the USSR went home from Germany. Maybe not even then. There are more ways of measuring historical events than those found in the creations of academics and politicians. We have the advantage of hindsight to determine what events led to what other events. Thanks for the good wishes. J