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Hi. I’m Jan, formerly named Peter. My mother was Jeanne, formerly named Wilhelmina. It was common practice naming children in Imperial Russia, that included the Ukraine where my Jewish mother was born, after German nobilities such as Kaiser Wilhelm II, German Emperor aka King of Prussia, 1888–1918. The Russian Revolutions of 1917-1918 ended violently the royal Romanov family reign to become USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; and King of Prussian’s reign ended in 1918 with World War I, to make a German Republic, ending autocratic monarchies that traced back to the Holy Roman Empires of the 1st millennium or 13th depending on how you define it.
That’s two millenniums of European history that is linked to three prior millenniums of Ancient Middle East civilizations that included Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Hittite empires to mention a few. I’m not a historian but I give this background, thanks to Google research, to give a little hint of the still currently top of the heap countries, the United States of America, USA, that is not even half a millennium old at 345 years, or a mere 17 generations of persons compared to the thousands of generations in European and Middle Eastern civilizations.
Maybe this will give me a little perspective and a little more patience in my idealistic expectations suffering the turbulence of current American politics, its adversarial traumas. I think I am into my third week of totally closing down my ears and eyes to my usual compulsive television news digestion. I lose sleep. I lose heart. I lose faith and health. I even almost lose the will to live. I recently investigated residence permit conditions to my birth country Denmark. Infantile reaction on my part, like much of youth today that always has great expectations and unrestrained need for immediate gratification. I don’t think I have the ability to evaluate the substantial changes in the USA since my coming here in 1946 at age 13. The contrast to Socialist Scandinavia, the stress of assimilation, pressure to raise a family blur my mind. I will try.
From my personal research, immigrant Jews to America were primarily small merchants, low tech manufacturers, farmers and intellectual refugees with nearly zero admission to US private companies and zero State and Federal institutions of all kinds, and with explicitly zero government support in health, housing or finance. Negroes were institutionally enslaved without barely the right to vote and relegated to poor education, poor wage employment and no social safety net. Blacks suffered 200 years of Jim Crow discrimination, north and south, prison, bank red lining housing and income one tenth of Whites.
Now that is 75 years in which Blacks, Colored and immigrants of all backgrounds have made substantial progress in education, health, housing, employment, professions and voting rights in just four generations. While I have only one more decade life left in my existence here or anywhere, my expectations of further progress should really be tempered to expect No Further Positive Changes in my lifetime here in America. The battleground lines are drawn, the two conservative and progressive camps are armed to the teeth, one with money without limit and States control, the other with voter majority and injustice grievance, both are basically at a TOTAL STATUS QUO STANDSTILL.

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