As a student of history, I frequently refer back to the past in the hopes that it might provide some degree of clarity that I might be able to apply to the current day. While I know better than to engage in the historical fallacy that deceptively promises that the past neatly and exactly dictates the future, I do find it interesting to observe the patterns and the events of a different age and how these intersect ours own times. What deeply troubles me, however, is that I have begun to hear rumblings and impulsive chantings of division and acrimony. I have begun to notice some alarming similarities between these times and other instances in our nation's history where we eschewed logic and reason for emotional excess and mutual paranoia. Such points in our past inevitably created terrible conflicts, the likes of which we are in many ways still dealing with into the current day. Irrationality, emotion in place of reason, illogical accusations, and a building animosity bordering on violent hatred between ideological poles was present then and seems to be swelling in intensity now.
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