I am an International Affairs major who is interested in becoming a Public Diplomat, which is essentially someone who lives in a host country as they work with the State Department to strive to understand the inner-workings of that host country while representing the United States to prevent war and conflict, so I keep tabs on current events and the state of human rights around the world consistently. I so often find myself bombarded with overwhelming reports of human rights law violations, violence, and the sin in the world that I retreat from news updates regularly and I am not even a diplomat yet. However, I have learned two valuable things in my pursuit to become politically and socially aware that I would like to share.

Firstly, the quote, "history does not repeat, it instructs" is most definitely true. Aside from being an International Affairs major, I am also a Classics major which means that while I am studying current events in the context of the events within two hundred years of the events that created them, I am studying the ancient world (emphasizing but not limited to ancient Rome) and I did not do that by accident. We are as much created by the events two hundred years ago as we are by the ancient world, and I wanted a blunt understanding of our past to be laced into a blunt understanding of our present. I see the intersection between "current" and "ancient" everyday, and I get to study it knowing that I will use that knowledge practically regardless of my career.

The way for me to truly understand the magnitude of the current state of the world (notably America) is if I know that we are mirroring Ancient Rome's affinity for slaughter, frivolity, and apathy that poisoned it and it caused its downfall. The way for me to truly understand the fact that knowing ancient stories and having a grasp on the power of words will shake fascists to the core is to see how Cicero's poetry that recollected the tales of both Rome's glory and ugliness terrified Cataline to his bones. The way for me to see how I systemically benefit from the inequality in the society I live in and be able to destroy it is to know how ancient politics that claimed to govern the value of life and death are alike to the ways American society perceives that it has power over life and death so I can find its weak points and pounce.

Secondly, I know that we are headed for the same darkness and catastrophe the turn of the century saw if we do not do something.

All of these early warning signs can be crossed off for American political leaders, as well as multiple leaders around the world. For any nation that has been overtaken by fascism at any point in history, it was a slow, seemingly distant and isolated decent that abruptly collided with everyday life and unleashed decades worth of shrapnel and reverberations that we are still living with.

This is not my standing on a soapbox hoping to strike fear into all reading this. This is my expressing something I believe strongly in and want everyone to be aware of to strike bravery into all reading this. The lure of the decent is the fact that it seems distant and isolated from you until it suddenly is not anymore.

The lure of the decent is laced in mediocrity because contrary to popular belief, mediocrity forces you to look straight ahead not straight down because mediocrity strives for "just enough" out of apathy so it only sees out of necessity and instant gratification. Excellence strives for "done thoroughly" out of deep belief that the long-term is your present and what you do matters.

The true opposite of love is not hatred, it is apathy for is "almost" not so much worse than "not at all"?

This is a call for you reading this to be self aware and to strive for excellence in what you do. This is the call to love people in the face of everything that tells you to be afraid of them or to hate them. Begin to fight fascism by doing things well and thinking for yourself no matter how costly. Look all around you even if it hurts your neck because that means seeing what can be done before it is too late.

Love people fiercely because love is what will kill the powerful grip suffocating the life out of the world.