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WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN
The Land of Broken Promises: A Tale of Two Countries
Chapter 1: A child of immigrants comes full circle
Why this, and why now?
An earlier version of this article, the first of an multi-part series, was originally published in 2018 in the blog Becoming Extraordinary on the now defunct site grainofinfinity.com. I became a Medium member soon after that and brought the series to this platform.
Four years ago, I decided I’d tell my story. Why? Because people like me who’d spent 50 or more years on this earth suddenly found ourselves thrown in a time machine against our will, the dials set to deja vu. Back to the days of not just my innocence as a child, but the innocence of my immigrant parents and so many like them. Back to a time a certain presidential nominee decided to call “great.” He promised to make America like that again.
Sure, America was great in the early 1960s when I was a baby. It was peachy. If you like cold wars and hot wars, bomb shelters and existential dread, rampant addictions and vices, widespread civil rights abuses and atrocities thinly cloaked in respectability. Now, all these decades later, we find ourselves in a new time. A time of cold wars and hot wars, bomb shelters and existential dread, rampant…
