Anti-democracy wave opening old wounds that may not heal

One of the horrors of history is that it often repeats itself. After World War I – in which Germany was a major protagonist – Adolf Hitler and the drums of Armageddon overtook the Weimar Republic and gave us World War II.

In the US, the abolition of slavery in 1865 brought the Era of Reconstruction in which African-Americans were for the first time accorded rights as citizens. Reconstruction ended in 1877. The Jim Crow Era, which followed, enacted official racial segregation or Apartheid in America until 1965. Blacks were once again subjugated as sub-human. History often repeats itself – with viciousness and devastation. A look at the globe today – and especially the ascension of Donald Trump – underscores the point.