History forgotten is hell revisited

 

https://www.americaoutloud.news/history-forgotten-is-hell-revisited/

The reality of the hellish world we are living in today is driven by a very simple failure. That failure is our not learning, listening to, or applying lessons from our history. I will address why America today is one which was created by we the people, and how we have allowed this current hell on earth to come about. It is enabled by our myopic view of life, lack of a long-term strategy, instant need for recognition and gratification, and tied to our lack of insight and understanding of the ongoing Cognitive War. Our failures are key enablers to listen, learn, and apply lessons from history, our weapons for our subjugation.

Today, I am going to revisit some history to help our listeners understand that if we fail to learn and apply the lessons of history ⏤ we will surely revisit the hell we have forgotten. In some cases, it is already here, and it is having some very real and long-lasting impacts.

I will cover several areas, including:

Focusing on one of the world’s foremost dissidents, who risked his life to tell us the real story of his 55 years of life in the Soviet Union and its gulag prisons – those of the old USSR – or Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/truth-tellers-alexander-isayevich-solzhenitsyn-5647985

I’ll then speak about the timeline of the fall of the USSR – as understanding the timeline helps put today’s challenges in perspective of this war.  https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/berlin-wall-soviet-union-1520124?gad_source=5

We will bring this discussion forward to what is occurring in America today, with the views of Victor David Hanson and President Trump and how they repeat my “Warning for All Ages.”

I will discuss the Cognitive War we are in NOW – speaking to a domestic and global example. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/may/16/modern-face-of-war-everything-everywhere-all-at-on/

I close by speaking to the will of the American people and the need to never apologize for who we are!

So, let me give our audience a bit of my own historical perspective on the Soviet Union before I address the lessons from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. We must understand that the greatest threat to our Republic is from within!

The world of Soviet dictatorship and subjugation began to evaporate with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989. At that time, I was in the middle of the Cold War as a young United States Air Force Officer stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany, at the 497th Reconnaissance Technical Squadron. I was a Soviet specialist and nuclear arms analyst who spent my first four years of active duty at the CIA’s National Photographic and Interpretation Center (NPIC).

Before I left the CIA and went to Europe, I had already been inside the Soviet Union several times in support of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed in 1988 by President Reagan and Michael Gorbachev, the Soviet leader. My efforts in supporting the Cold War would continue, as would my on-site inspections into the Soviet Union until December of 1991.

Moving from the free (the West) into the Soviet bloc (the East) was like moving from a world of color and vibrance, music and engagement to a world of darkness, solemn and silent, gray, and a real version of subjugation.

For those who understand dictatorships, the collapse of the USSR was inevitable, but they can last years, decades, or centuries. Russia today will collapse again, as will China; time is not on their side — I think years or a decade.

However, in this case, the Soviet Union lasted for 73 years. During those 73 years — it created hell on earth for those under the Soviet boot of subjugation and created an uncertain world where communism was expanding and the threat of nuclear war or an invasion into Western Europe a daily reality. Where we, as children, hid under our desks and had little iodine pills to take in the event of a nuclear blast.

Few of today’s generations do not know what the Soviet Union was, nor the Cold War, and not many remember the events of 9/11 and the twenty-year war on terror. If we fail to learn and apply history and adjust our concepts, structures, and cultures from the industrial age to the information age — we will surely revisit hell on earth!

You can learn more about Cognitive Warfare, the problem, theory, analysis, operations, strategy, and solutions by reading Mr. Haugland’s just released book “The Cognitive War – Why We Are Losing and How We can Win.”