In this story I draw many comparisons - some very conditional. In making these connections, I don't mean to suggest that are that all things are equal and that we are simply recapitulating the past. Rather, I believe this can be an effective strategy for revealing the subtle ways in which the past is carried through into the present - the persistence of rhetoric, attitudes, metaphors, rationalizations, justifications, and symbolic associations. I am interested in how our interpretations of the present are often unconsciously filtered through our conceptions of the past.