Pulling the trigger.

[CharlesHarris]

I can't help thinking where the US will be in another generation, if there is no course correction to keep the steerage passengers from taking over the ship, running it aground at flank speed while drinking the remaining free booze on board while the band plays a mix of hip-hip, arabic qasidah and marriachi music.

All should read Keith Lowe's Savage Continent, his non-fiction account of ground truth across Europe at the close of World War II and the years immediately thereafter. Based largely on primary sources on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Lowe takes the reader into a world deliberately obscured for multiple reasons by both victor and vanquished alike.

Simply put, an orgy of slaughter, savagery, terror, and revenge – at both individual and national policy levels – conducted mostly after hostilities had officially ceased. To his credit, Lowe tells the truth about modern, civilized human behavior in the wake of world-historical disruptions, perpetrated by all sides against anyone who stood in their way. It is about our illusions of civility, and the loss of those illusions.