Last night I had the strangest dream

                                         I never had before.

                                I dreamed the World had all agreed

                                        To put an end to war.

We went to hear a talk about the Media yesterday. A former professor who started out in broadcasting while in college saw the development of our modern systems of getting out the news and entertainment to the buying public. In the early days manufacturers made their money by only selling radio sets. Then someone got the idea to sell advertising by offering “soap operas” and singers and such to listeners. Now technologically driven hardware (including cable and satellites) are the means of getting us sit at home in front of giant wall units. We have come a long way from when our families were glued to radio sets.

We go through periods of fads where we change the way we did things and the way we thought about them. This “carb” thing that suddenly has its lower value plastered over almost every commodity is a prime example.  I didn’t think about carbohydrates before someone decided to exploit their presence in foods that had the poor judgment to fatten us up. But what I wanted to talk about was the old songs that had the poor judgment to come afoul of a new generation that thought only old fogies sang them or believed in the messages they carried.

I was a war veteran from the period that has been ballyhooed as the “Greatest” because we were a huge number of young men who went willingly (me) and unwillingly (the draft) to Mr. Roosevelt’s war.  It turned out that we were fighting against alien ideologies (Fascism and Nazism) and in a desperate act of friendship hooked up with an alien philosophy (Communism) to keep Democracy alive. We assisted our former enemies (Italy, Germany and Japan) and then squabbled over a lengthy cold war with Soviet Russia until they caved in and became more capitalistic than the U.S. of A.

The rest of the song that I used to sing to kids in camp and in the classroom when I taught history with a guitar and lyrics went like this:

                                     I dreamed I saw a mighty room

                                               And the room was filled with men,

                                     And the papers they were signing said

                                               They’d never fight again!

There are more verses extending that dream.  There were people in the streets celebrating when copies of those papers were scattered all around. It wasn’t as simple as that and isn’t simple today.  We are not singing those old songs anymore and we have forgotten the promises made after the “Greatest Generation” came home. As a veteran, idealist and utopian I wish we still sang songs like this one.