To call the modern clickity-click digital paralyzing of economies and small businesses across the globe an equivalent to WWII D day on Normandy beaches is an insult to the soldiers, leaders, and American citizens who pulled off one of the greatest military defensive moves in world history. The contemporary politicians who use this comparison to pad their compliance and win votes probably don’t know their history, have little respect for that history, and what is even worse, appear not to care. The real D Day required a visceral courage, and represents a charge of men carrying massive packs of equipment jumping into cold water and charging up a defended beach in soaked heavy clothes in a spray of bullets, with mushrooming, deafening, explosions all around. The real D Day required massive preparation, sacrifice and endurance for everyday American citizens. The real D Day even impacted the wealthy industrialists like Henry Ford. Thousands upon thousands were about to and did die. No one in Washington was taking the day off to play a round of golf that costs taxpayers thousands of dollars for security. No one was strutting their stuff assuming personal glory for a piece of economic bureaucracy that will most certainly cause suffering for the common person if nothing else. Calling these measures against Iran an economic D Day is an insult to America’s “greatest generation”.

It is a disadvantage these days to have lived across two centuries. The disadvantage is called memory. This writer’s father was in the Pacific front and not Europe, but the depression and WWII put accent marks on our family’s lives sufficient to make me want to understand what happened to the 20th century. Even harder, here in the 21st century I am being forced to understand the critical and damaging difference between grandiosity and greatness and the difference is dizzying. It was the grandiose that shed so much blood in the 20th century and it was the great that had to die to contain the damage. We are on the brink once again, but this time it is for our own Nation’s 21st century leadership mistaking grandiose for great.

Modest proposal for good:

The meaning of the word “good” is both simple and direct, yet elusive and nuanced to the n’th degree. Our President is not wrong in wanting this nation to be “great”, but greatness is linked inextricably to goodness and goodness is linked to words like empathetic, courageous, loving, kindness, generosity, etc etc. Grandiosity is the easy detour leading to fame while avoiding the hard work of greatness. Fame’s largest parking lot is infamy. This American era is heading for infamy in its misuse of language and history.  We the People must drag greatness back first into our political culture. To do that our decisions must be good and we must once again have courage. Good’s universal descriptors are not limited by culture, nation or religion. Don’t be fooled by grandiosity. Bring your sense of good into the 21st century and ground good in humility. That would be good.