It doesn't do any good to complain, even to oneself. History has ceased to be a major concern for most Americans and even our key leaders, like former President Trump, often get it wrong. But then, who cares that we didn't have airports in the Revolutionary War? Try fully explaining the Boston Tea Party to students whose ONLY reference to tea is southern style sweet ice tea! One wrote, on a quiz, the Indians poured buckets and buckets of tea into Boston Harbor.

History teaching has taken backseat to other disciplines that seem to make more sense like science, math, and even aviation. But, what happened a hundred years ago or five hundred years ago will come back to haunt us. Paul Kennedy, in his book The Rise and Fall of Great Powers,all but predicted that world powers rise and fall based on many different factors, including economic ones.

I was a history teacher, instructor and, according to my community college chairperson, an adjunct professor. Now I wonder why I entered education half way through a life career as an unsuccessful businessperson. Maybe I was living a life long dream that flowed from my history-loving father and a German family with deep ties to World War II.

There is much talk today about the decline of the American Republic, perhaps a parallel story to Ancient Rome. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was contemporary in it's publication to the precious documents that set up the American democratic experiment. President Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address asked if this nation would endure.

I would have enjoyed teaching until my body fully gave out. But I was stopped by a former student who accused me of misconduct. It was his word against mine, even though I was out of the country when the so-called indiscretion took place. I took it all as a sign. The church school did not support me.

Then in 2011 I became incapacitated with a major heart attack, fatty liver disease, and a host of other ailments like COPD and kidney dysfunction. My saintly mother passed in September 2012. She had always been my support.

I wrote history. Over 1500 articles for an on-line Canadian group out of Vancouver. But by 2013 they too found themselves bankrupt and relegated to the pits of Internet limbo. But, I still think getting the message out is vitally important: History matters! Perhaps more now than ever before.

It is Saturday and I wake up to news about a major Hamas Strike against Israel. And, secondarily, a 6 point earthquake in Afghanistan. All over the globe conflicts loom and, of course, the Ukraine war is still in brutal swing. But now Israel. And, here on Saturday there is no news, just football games. I enjoy sports as much as anyone, but how can sports mask the reality of bloodshed all over the world.

President Biden promised solidarity. We support Israel. But there will never be lasting peace in the Middle East, at least not as long as we prefer football over tanks and missiles. And only last night I re-watched the 1977 film, Black Sunday with Robert Shaw and Bruce Dern.

Israel should remind us that history repeats. Whether it is the prophet Jeremiah lamenting the fall of Jerusalem or Titus destroying the city hundreds of years later, history repeats and we dare not forget it. I have been to the Forum Romanum and seen the arches, the trophies of long past wars. The monuments of the past, even our American relatively short past, stand around us and we debate their on going relevance and value.

Was Robert E Lee a brilliant general of a war criminal, a traitor? Debates about simple grey clad soldiers carved in stone or displayed in bronze, feed our frenzy to erase history. Everyone has a good reason. Regardless, history matters. One hundred years ago history will still matter, even if human beings live under domes to survive.

And we will never learn from history. As fascinating as the study can be, it is eventually buried like the civilizations of early Mesopotamia, covering the lie that somehow human beings have solved the questions of war and peace, good and evil.