Today, as I write this, it is October 1, 2012. This morning’s dream might be classed as nightmare, but I almost always resist such classifications. I tend to view such dreams as instructional and prophetic. They can be teaching moments or the content is something to be mindful of and to take seriously as a possible future. Oddly, as I say this, it seems this dream is set in the past, but the feeling is of one of future peril.
The location of this dream is set in Idaho on December 7, 1942. I am a radio talk show host. The regular host is too sick to do his host duties on this day and I am the radio station manager/owner doing my best to stand-in. I am unprepared and I am trying to sound like a professional radio personality. I have perused the newspaper headlines of the day and have decided to wing it with social commentary about God and morality. It is 1942 you can do such things and not be politically incorrect or controversial at this time in broadcast history for doing such a radio program. Well, it is my radio station and I can do what I want.
I am several minutes into my radio broadcast and I start to warm up to my new job when the secretary enters the broadcast booth with an urgent news wire release. News of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has come. The poor secretary is at the microphone trying to read the news release but finally has an emotional breakdown before she can finish reading it. I put my hand gently on her shoulder and take the news release from her and finish reading the report.
There is an additional call to read out for soldiers of the Idaho National Guard to report for duty. There is a long colorful preamble to these military orders calling on everyone to do their patriotic duty during this new state of war. We need to protect the homeland and our national shores from invasion. References are made to veterans of the First World War and how they might contribute again in waging this new world war. Mines at sea and gas attacks are mentioned as possible threats. I see an image in my mind’s eye of doughboy soldiers boarding troopships. They are walking up gangplanks with bright shining smiling faces and grim reaper figures are floating to the left, and right eager to beckon them aboard.
The text of the release uses military terms and vocabulary, that I as a civilian, am not familiar with, and I struggle reading, and understanding all these obscure army abbreviations until I finally give up on trying to and settle on just trying to address the human and spiritual perspective, and seek to comfort, and not panic the listening public.
I point out to people that perhaps the original subject of the day’s broadcast was not accidental and that if ever there was a time to get a handle of the larger issues of life and death it was on an occasion like this.
This dream of course deals with an event of our past history, but the whirlwind current of events suggests that the headlines of today could be a replay and an awakening to the next possible world conflict—the rise of militant fascist Islam. Irrational Islamic passions are on fire across the planet. Our American ambassador in Libya was just recently killed in a terrorist attack. Iran is close to having a nuclear bomb and Israel may preemptively strike them soon. The United States is going to be confronted with an enemy that numbers in the billions that wants us to die or convert. Cutting off heads is a closes as they come to compromise. The old Soviets were at least rational beings. Eventually, we all can buy prayer rugs or shorter coffins. I have no confidence in our current leaders to effectively respond. The radio station owner’s words need to be reconsidered for our present age. I hope someone like minded will one day dream a brighter dream of how we survived these times fifty years from now or they are ok with the nightmare world Islam promises to bring for us.
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