"History doesn't repeat itself...but it often rhymes." Mark Twain supposedly said that...but no matter who it was, it's true...right now. Right here in 2020. We're rhyming with 1933 like a Mother's Day card-writer.

There is a lot of awfulness being thrown around on social media (and even face to face where a complete stranger yelled at a friend's wife for wearing a mask), so maybe we can go back to 1933, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inauguration, to find the rhyme...and the words to help us move forward.

"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly..."

I love this...because, well, I can deal with almost anything, as long as I know the truth of it. I'm certain you're the same way. Don't make something sound better than it is. Tell the truth, all the bad if that's what's happening, and we can face it together head on.

Obviously, Covid-19 isn't the Great Depression. Like the Great Depression, tho, it is a national tragedy, and we have to be in it together to beat it.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

That's right...it was THAT speech. He wasn't trying to make the problem sound small, he was trying to help us understand WE are strong enough to embrace the challenge. Remember, FDR's life wasn't all roses and top hats. He knew terror, fear, and all the other emotions we're going thru right now.

To be very clear, I'm not saying be complacent, I'm not saying not to worry. I'm saying to be constructive not destructive. I'll end with one more quote from the speech...

“These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.”

NOTE: One year after FDR gave this speech, he visited Rochester, MN! Here's what he had to say...

Listen to James Rabe Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11-Noon on KROC AM 1340 and 96.9 FM and Weekdays with Jessica Williams Weekday from 6 - 10 AM on Y-105 FM

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