Making the same mistakes, and new ones.

 Every war is a rehearsal for the next one.

For my post this month I was going to write about La Malinche and me. Maybe in March. Hopefully.

But with what's going on in Ukraine I feel that I have to share my thoughts. At least to relieve the pressure building in my head. What upset me most were those photos and videos of ordinary people caught in the middle of this catastrophe. I don't understand the sense of this ruin and conquest. Who will be better off? The defense contractors are cheering, perhaps.

For the last few months I've been following a YouTube channel about World War Two. Lately they've been discussing February 1943, the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad and the Soviet offensive into Ukraine. What a tragic coincidence to the present moment. We're familiar with the black & white images of civilian refugees trudging along, fleeing with what little they could carry. Now we're seeing the latest incarnation, moms and children, dressed like they've shopped at Kohl's, dragging roller carry-ons stuffed with the last of their possessions. People lined up at ATMs withdrawing cash to grease the escape route. SUVs on fire. Uploading TikToks of the carnage. Vignettes of industrialized murder. It's truly disturbing to see so much mayhem and terror amid the trappings of modern life. The war-ravaged locations seem as if they're on the outskirts of the Denver metroplex. 

This brings a sense of déjà vu from my military service in Desert Storm. When we drove through Kuwait City, I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the contradiction of so much destruction against the backdrop of a contemporary suburban landscape.

Then again, such devastation has been raging for years in the Middle East, Africa, Myanmar, Afghanistan. Not too long ago, Sarajevo, the site of the Winter Olympics, was under siege and artillery bombardment. 

In response to the Ukraine invasion, there's been a lot of the expected political bloviating, meant more to placate constituents on this side of the battle line than to intimidate Putin. Recent promotional videos of NATO aren't very reassuring, stressing diversity and inclusion over combat prowess. Meanwhile in Kyiv, the government is handing out guns, not equity pamphlets. 

If you're at most a casual student of history, you know things can spin out of control very fast and in a very bad way. Every war begins with a grand miscalculation of events and a disregard for unintended consequences. For now, let's stay upbeat and expect that next month, my post will be about La Malinche.

Making a Better Human

After his time in Tombstone, Wyatt Earp and his common-law wife, Josephine Sarah Marcus, set out for Alaska, where they ran the Dexter Saloon. What intrigues me about this photo of their saloon is the humor, a hundred years after the fact, which still holds up.

Humor is an integral part of human nature, and though we are a civilization centuries old with many differences in customs, languages, and shared experiences, I'm amazed when jokes manage to transcend the ages. One of my favorites is from ancient China and discusses the origins of the house cat. The story is that cats had been sent by the Gods to watch over us, but the cats don't do a very good job of it because they sleep so much.

This interest about human character stems from panels at science-fiction conferences where we discussed future developments involving humans and high-technology. One favorite topic addressed the human-computer interface and potential changes to human biology. For example, connecting our brains directly to computers would allow us to access information from vast libraries and process that data at incredible speeds. The eventual goal would be "singularity," where every mind would be wired to the Internet to create one global super brain. What a schizophrentic mess that would be. Who would set the agenda? Proponents of that technology argue in purple prose that such a development should be hailed as the next step in human evolution. Homo-Google.

That ability would surely make us smarter. Right? And by extension, better. What's missing in this talk of becoming more advanced humans is any discussion about what truly makes us better. I've yet to see a software app that'll make anyone more honest. Or more empathetic. Or wiser. Conversely, I haven't seen an app that would prevent dishonesty, theft, treachery, or even murder. Human nature as expressed through humor, or doing good, or doing bad, won't change. To that end, here's one of my favorite quotes from Scripture, Job 5:7 Man was born into trouble just as surely as sparks fly upward. 

And that trouble is what keeps us crime writers busy.