Chasing Shadows

What makes a tyrant? His genes? Probably not. His home and family? Maybe. His environment and childhood. Maybe not. His peers? Possibly. What he learns from his parents and his teachers? Certainly. What he learned from his friends and his foes? Definately. How he puts the knowledge he has learned from all these sources to use? Absolutely. Then, once the tyrant is made, how do we stop him? Sometimes we sit around the house or the places where we meet our friends and complain about the government and taxes and anything else we can think of to complain about. Most of us aren't old enough to remember Hitler and his fixation with the Jews and his twisted beliefs that the Jews caused all of Germany's troubles. Sometimes I sit and think, What if? What if Hitler's fixation was with English speaking people. It seems to me that these people would have been easier to find in German speaking Germany than German speaking Jews. What if Hitler had been born in England or The United States of America? Would the people of these countries have listened to his demented rantings? You don't think so? Well maybe not in the 1930's, but what about a century later. What if the "Hitler" figure was born and raised in the United States. What if he really looked and talked like a nice guy, he didn't beat his fists and scream like a madman. What if he made a good sounding series of points that told the citizens that their troubles of the age were attributed to a particular race or group of people living in the United States? OF course our immediate response is to say, "No, not me!" But with the proper brain washing and finger pointing you might be one who would agree to the total extermination of one "Terrible" race of people. This is the story of three people, their loves and hates, their hopes and fears and our hope for the future. Our story begins in January of the new millennium and proceeds forty three years through some very dark times. Hitler believed that the reality of Germany would improve if the Jews were eliminated. But there are many realities. One man's reality is another's fantasy and it is fantasy to think that the human species can ever live without fear, hate, crime, envy or jealousy.