It’s always an interesting exercise to try to look into the future to see what we’ll see when we look back at today. I’m not trying to be deliberately obscure but years seem to be remembered by single events, usually catastrophic – Noah’s great flood, the great fire of London, the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima, the sinking of the Titanic, the start of World War 2 in 1939.
These are the rare kind of headline-grabbing events that earn whole chapters in our school history books.
Who chooses what will be remembered? Winston Churchill is often quoted as saying: “I know that history will treat me kindly, for I intend to write it.” And he did.
What will our own age be remembered for? Will it be the time of the great coronavirus pandemic or will it be the time the American president went mad and invaded his own country? I rather suspect the latter will be the case. Does anybody still remember the great polio scare of the 50s? Ask most young people about it today and they’ll probably say “what’s polio?” But those of us who lived through it can still remember the global relief when the Salk vaccine was developed and we all received our drop of muti on a teaspoon of sugar.
After that we soon forgot about polio and life went back to normal. Let’s hope that’s soon the case now. But I think the American fiasco will be remembered for many years. It’s not often that a whole nation suffers a wave of complete embarrassment.
We can be pretty sure there’ll be all kinds of amendments to the American constitution to prevent this kind of situation can’t happen again. Good luck, Joe Biden. Which brings us closer to home.
We’ve seen what can happen when a leader – or a ruling party – grabs too much power. Are we serious about preventing similar power grabs happening here in our own country?
Last Laugh
A man walked into the pharmacy and asked the pharmacist If she had anything to cure hiccups. Without warning the pharmacist slapped him hard across the face.
“What was that for?” The man demanded. “Well, I’ll bet you don’t have hiccups any more,” she said. “I never did have hiccups,” he said, rubbing his cheek, “but my wife has hiccups.”
* "Tavern of the Seas" is a daily column written in the Cape Argus by David Biggs. Biggs can be contacted at dbiggs@glolink.co.za
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.