The world does seem in dire straits indeed and has for roughly the last five years or so. The seeming progress of Barack Obama's election cascading in to regular civil strife and civil war in the United States, where racial and gender harmony, worked on for so many decades, appears torn to shreds. Cities are on fire, under fire or being torn apart. A rivalry with Russia, which is held responsible for the election of Donald Trump has been stoked again between America and the rest of the west. China is on the ascent, as is intolerance, cultural malaise, fear, despair and disappointment.

All of this seems horrible and is until a thought comes in. We've been here before. A friend of mine, Larry Bernard (who can be seen commenting on comic book movies) told me that "all Obama and Trump did was take us back to the 1970s." During his election, Barack Obama was compared to Kennedy for many reasons, from his charisma to his minority status. According to Roger Stone's book, Donald Trump was personally told by Richard Nixon during the 1980s that he would make a "fine president" and Trump's tacit support of Roy Moore in Alabama reflects Nixon tacit support of segregationist George Wallace.

The rapper Eminem, after making a diss freestyle aimed at Donald Trump, recorded a song called "Unbreakable," which roughly tackles white privilege and police abuse of African Americans. As daring and good as the song is, its subject matter, timing from the point by which he was still very famous and themes more than reflect the 1969 song "In the Ghetto" by Elvis Presley, a white musician Eminem is often compared to for his role in making music associated with black Americans.

The closest that the world saw to America's contemporary place in the world was in the 1970s. As Trump was seen piggy backing with largely developing world leaders like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin or Rodrigo Duterte, Nixon opened economic trade with China and retreated from Vietnam. Markets in communist Cuba were filled in the 1970s while the Soviets marched in to Prague - the outcome of the late 1980s was far from certain.

Lastly, the tense strife between genders in the United States was highly reflected during the 70s. The late 60s and 70s saw the rise of radical feminists like Valerie Solanas, who wrote the manifesto for "SCUM - the Society for Cutting Up Men." Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Many of the comic book storylines making waves in theaters and Netflix, such as The Punisher or X-Men's Dark Phoenix Saga, were written during the 1970s and informed by that decade's social climate. Shootings, often with identical motivations to ones in recent years, were prolific in the late 1960s and 1970s.Much as Richard Spencer has gone to celebrity status by talking as a blatant white nationalist in front of African Americans, George Lincoln Rockwell did quite literally the same thing until he was assassinated. (Watch Alex Haley's Roots for a dramatization of it.) As jarring as the sight of swastikas being waved in Charlottesville was, Rockwell's group literally did the same thing as a traveling stage show back in the 1970s.

The parallels are to the point that it feels like we are in some sort of simulation - replaying the same events for a new generation. This year's total solar eclipse was the first in decades since 1979. We like to think we are creatures of free will but what if our behavior and attitudes are manipulated by weather, the rotation of the sun and earth and other forces of nature? The apparent madness of the world would make more sense if the explanation was that it's motivated by something besides our reason. If that were true, how would it change how we view ourselves? 

Economic conditions are as much a factor in human behavior as anything environmental. However, distribution seems set by the conditions of the planet that creates the basis for our goods more than any system we create - each system has had its abundance and then traumatic failures.