Remembrance Day reflection

In most of the European world, this day -- November 11 -- is Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. The event commemorated is the silence after four bloody years of the guns on the Western front ending combat there in what we call the First World War. 

That First World War shaped and reshaped modern Europe, destroying empires and unleashing anti-capitalist, nationalist, and democratic forces that had been checked by old regimes. Those of us who observed the collapse of the Soviet Union have seen changes of somewhat comparable magnitude and import -- and those very changes were still part of the backwash of that First World War that is scarcely marked in the US today.

This informational plaque hangs at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England, a remarkable institution which seeks to bring to life this formative history. Like the United States, Britain is a multi-racial and consequently multi-historical society where citizens with origins all over the (mostly imperial) world can strive to learn from each other's past.

Perhaps, as we live the collapse of the American world empire facilitated by our greedy madman of a President, we should pause to remember our ancestors who lived a similarly disorienting, murderous transition. It ain't easy or safe living in a collapsing empire ...