Sixty Years On

Maybe ignorance is bliss, because when you look back decade by decade, it seems that today we're like puppets, our actions prescribed in large part by the past, by the "dead hand of history." Certainly we seem as a species clueless and mired in stubborn, short-sighted and irrational mindsets as much today as ever.

In any case, 1949 saw any number of developments leading to 2009's realities. NATO was formed (now with troops deployed in Afghanistan, etc.).

The People's Republic of China became official in 1949. In 2009, the PRC more or less owns a huge chunk of the USA's assets -- doubt many saw that coming down the pike: not even the Chinese strategists themselves. Back then, within a year Chinese "volunteers" would be fighting Americans in Korea, still a global ulcer above the 38th parallel.

Pakistan and India came to a temporary ceasefire in a war largely over Kashmir. Three wars later, they're still braced for more as of 2009, even as the Pakistani Army fights Taliban and other insurgents within its own borders.


One change over the past sixty years: Germany. In 1949, Germany formally became two countries, one dominated by the Soviets, the other dominated by NATO. The Berlin Airlift was a big deal at the time, helping to preserve Berlin for the West. Here, we've made some intervening changes in that Germany is one unified country again. The Berlin Wall went up in 1961 and came down in 1989. The Cold War is more or less over and has been for twenty years, at least compared to how things were in 1949. Within the US in 1949, there was not uncoincidentally another Red Scare. The right wing viewpoint was about as wild-eyed in 1949 as it is in 2009. "People are stupid. What a shock." (Six Feet Under).


In 1949, Israel and its Arab neighbors agreed to a truce with the Green Line -- still fighting over that one, with several wars to go between then and now. Israel also joined the United Nations in 1949.


The first couple of VW Beetles were sold in the USA. Germans were already driving them around in the 1930s.

Another thing from 1949: a US veteran decided to shoot a bunch of people. Just like an incident from 2009, eh?

CAMDEN, N.J., Sept.6--Howard B. Unruh, 28 years old, a mild, soft-spoken veteran of many armored artillery battles in Italy, France, Austria, Belgium and Germany, killed twelve persons with a war souvenir Luger pistol in his home block in East Camden this morning. He wounded four others.

Unruh, a slender, hollow-cheeked six-footer paradoxically devoted to scripture reading and to constant practice with firearms, had no previous history of mental illness but specialists indicated tonight that there was no doubt that he was a psychiatric case, and that he had secretly nursed a persecution complex for two years or more. . . (New York Times snippet).

Today's Rune: Fertility.