Looking back, seeing those moments when we could have chosen a better way. The Berlin wall fell. But we didn’t support Russia as it shed its past. Left it for the oligarchs and a new generation of despots to pick up the pieces. Carter put solar panels on the White House, and Reagan removed them.
After 9/11 the world was suffused with sympathy and goodwill towards the USA. Which squandered that moment by seeking revenge and harming thousands of innocent people. Americans didn’t ask why they had been a target. Arab spring blossomed then those flowers fell to violence and loss. Why???
Did we learn any lessons from the financial collapse, result of sheer avarice, of the early 2000s? Apparently not. What about the children who marched, inspired by Greta Thunberg? Who heeded their voices as they shouted to the adults that they had a right to grow up and inhabit a livable planet?
Then another key moment, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic when the whole world was united against a common enemy. How quickly the promise of a new world emerging dissolved into the incomprehensible dystopia all around us today.
Makes one believe in the devil, or at least in a strange flaw in human nature that makes us destroy what we love, discard what we need.
Thinkings 
A post I wrote a few years ago, while in a similar state of despair, is still set to ‘private’ rather than ‘publish.’ You’ve presented your thoughts so clearly and in such a gut-wrenching way, I expect your readers, like me, can’t help but empathize with the emotional pain you feel every time your hopes are raised, and then dashed by events happening here and abroad. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” (Mark Twain is often cited as the source of this quotation, but no one seems to have a definitive answer one can reference with confidence.
As usual, I love this reflection and commentary. You are so crisp and insightful. Love and hugs to you, Linda