Deja Vu All Over Again

By TAD BARTIMUS

Mesmerized in front of the television on New Year's Eve, I was struck by the universality of the human race. It's one thing to hear it said in speeches at the United Nations; it's quite another to sit in your own living room and witness it in each country's and culture's welcome of the new millennium.

"We're all the same," I marveled, over and over, as Japanese swimmers emerged from sand on a seemingly empty beach, Scottish children danced a reel, Africans swayed to the beat of their own drums and Polynesians paddled their canoes when their clocks chimed midnight. Here we are, I thought, laughing, lifting our children onto our shoulders so they can see better, clapping our hands in glee, kissing, crying, hugging, behaving exactly the same way no matter what we look like or where we are.

How each person marked the occasion was as fascinating as the event itself. As my global family's celebration progressed through time zones I repeatedly blessed the electronic age. It was an uplifting revelation to watch millions express New Year optimism in art, music, poetry and prose that transcended language and customs. Thanks to a camera lens, satellite technology and human ingenuity we've come to know one another better. The globe should never again seem so vast and impersonal.

Exhilarated by a glimpse of what the future could be, an old Vietnam protest rallying cry flashed into my head: "Ain't gonna make war no more." Why should we, I thought, watching fireworks over Red Square, listening to trumpets at the Eiffel Tower, smiling at the one-eyed box while Arctic peoples applauded under northern lights. If we're capable of such transcendent beauty and camaraderie, why should we ever fight again?

Because, as Julius Caesar said in about 40 B.C., "It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and hungry-looking." All despots and tyrants fear the pale and hungry-looking. They, in turn, will poke sticks in their enemies' eyes until they achieve liberte, egalite and fraternite.

At the millennium moment, civil wars raged on in Indonesia, parts of Africa, Latin America and various republics of the one-time Soviet Union. Chechen guerrillas and Russia soldiers continued to kill each other in dark cellars, open ditches and minefields. The Four Horsemen rode back and forth through the streets of Grozny, along country roads, into the winter mountains, casting civilization's eternal shadows -- murder, rape, mutilation, wanton destruction.

Few intrepid journalists venture into the Chechen maw, but one who did recently reported, "They had to destroy the town to save it." What? Surely he didn't say what we think he said.

Deja vu all over again.

"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it," a senior U. S. adviser said at Ben Tre, Vietnam during the 1968 Tet offensive.

How can this be? we ask ourselves, as we live under our cell phone umbrella, watch our instant replays and order out for pizza. Haven't we learned anything in several thousand years?

Yes, we have. But until all of us on this planet have the capability of seeing that we truly are all alike, until we all have equal educational and economic opportunities, until we have the freedom to write the poems in our minds and sing the music in our hearts, the new millennium promise will remain only that – a promise.

As Shakespeare imagined Julius Caesar to say: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves… ."

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