Looking back at historic events, as is my wont, I often wonder what the people involved in those events would have thought if they had been able to foresee the eventual fallout from their actions (or inactions). For example:

Would it ever have occurred to the Wright Brothers — Orville and Wilbur — back then on December 17, 1903, that a little over a century later, there would be such a thing as a Stealth bomber? Or that things called drones would be fighting our wars, and causing panic along the U.S. eastern seaboard among people ready to believe they were being propelled by Chinese-Iranian-Martian invaders?

Or . . .

On December 17, 1777, while the newly declared United States of America was fighting its war for independence from Great Britain, France formally recognized the U.S. as a sovereign nation and joined in the fight against the British, helping to win our freedom. Who would then have anticipated that, just 107 years later — on July 4, 1884 — France would also be presenting the U.S. with the Statue of Liberty, or that the outsized “Assembly Required” sculpture would become the enduring symbol of the young country? Or that the United States would go on to be the political, industrial and economic world leader that it is today?

Or . . .

On December 17, 1892, when the first issue of Vogue magazine was published, that it would still be around in 2024?

Or, for that matter, that there would even be a year 2024?

Or . . .

On December 17, 1991, when Boris Yeltsin announced that the Soviet Union would cease to exist as a political entity by New Year’s Eve, giving rise to a new era of hope and optimism amongst the peoples of that country and, indeed, of the world . . . who would have believed that it would take less than a decade for a then unknown and insignificant individual to take the reins of power and bring it all crashing down again?

Yeltsin was as good as his word, and in fact brought it in ahead of schedule. On Christmas Day, December 25th, he unseated — quite literally, according to an eyewitness source — Mikhail Gorbachev . . . and the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered at the Kremlin for the final time. Gorbachev was out; Yeltsin was in; and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was no more. Technically, at least.

Merry Christmas, Russia.

For eight years Yeltsin tried to carry on the reforms of his predecessor, and to build on them in order to bring his country into the late 20th Century before it rolled over into the 21st . . . sometimes with success, other times not so much. But he made one enormous, irreversible, utterly disastrous mistake, for which the world is still paying.

He brought Vladimir Putin from St. Petersburg, where he was working as Mayor Anatoly Sobchak’s “go-to guy,” to Moscow to be Yeltsin’s own jack-of-all-trades. And the rest, as they say, is history.

*. *. *

It makes you stop and think twice about your own actions, and about the future . . . doesn’t it?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
12/18/24