When I was a young adult I read a bunch of books written in the 1920s and 30s by British authors: Arthur Ransome, Hugh Lofting, Edith Nesbit, Frances Burnett and others.

Outside the various stories presented, the books shared a consistent sub-theme: the authors had aged out of their times. All of them had grown to adulthood in the late Victorian era and all of them, at the times the books were written, lived in a new era of automobiles crowding the roads, of airplanes filling the skies, of massive industry, and of course, of rising fascism.

There was a kind of bittersweet sadness in those writings, a longing for an earlier more gentle time, and also bewilderment at the toxic hate that was then boiling up out of Europe. They were confounded by this new lust for violence, arising seemingly from nowhere, that was so unlike the lives they had lived as children and young people. They were lost, adrift, and saddened that things had changed so suddenly and so badly. And they could see the storm coming.

I understand those writings better now. My sisters and I along with our peers were the generation for whom our parents fought a world war. We were the reward for victory -- the idea of us. Their beloved children, a new generation of free people raised in plenty and given tools to achieve greatness. They sacrificed everything for it. For us.

And so I grew up free, in a society that cared about its children, that looked to the stars, that strove to achieve wonderful things and did so. Apollo. Curing polio. Caring for the elderly. Raising up the oppressed and giving them, finally, the equal chance that was their birthright. It was a wonderful time, a good era and as young people we all waited to take our place at the helm and continue to make the world better.

And now I blink and I am here. A self-evidently venal idiot holds the presidency. The grandchildren of those who liberated concentration camps are building their own camps in swamps. Instead of going to the stars we are seeking out people we used to welcome and in racist fury casting them out, destroying their families and shaming our ancestors.

So like those aging Victorians who made it to the 1930s and were confounded by the change around them, I too am bewildered.

And I too see the coming storm.