It Got Louder

I grew up in the 1970s in an affluent Country far from genocides and wars and disasters. The World Wars ended almost 2 decades before I was even born (1963).

I did grow up as a citizen of a Cold War country, but long after it’s apex in the early 1960s (also before I was born). There was a scare when Reagan started talking about a “limited” nuclear war after taking office in 1981, but he chilled when Gorby came along.

History, in one way, is a series of wars, genocides and disasters. Starting with the 1990s they began again, or actually, continued. The Gulf War was the first time I remember Canada being at war. Then the Yugoslavian and Rwandan episodes showed that genocide was back.

September 11, 2001 was a shock – not because it was the long expected terrorist attack, but because of the enormity of its success. My money had been down on an attack at LAX. (That attack had indeed been planned but foiled at the BC – Washington border).
I had never imagined suicide bombers in North America – that seemed such a Middle Eastern and far away thing.

The invasion of Iraq showed that America had unlearned all of its lessons from Viet Nam.

The Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 has to rank as the biggest cyclical thing in my lifetime. Since I know some history, the last such major one in the Indian Ocean had been after Krakatoa erupted – in 1883 (none of my Grandparents had been born for that one).

I had spent the 1990s studying and even writing about the World Wars as they seemed too far away from the quietness of my times.

Then my times got louder.

TF