With the FY25 Falls Church operating budget approved almost unanimously, this Monday’s annual Memorial Day Parade in the Little City expected to draw 10,000 or more from outside the City, and the latest Class of 2024 at Falls Church’s Meridian High School set to graduate in what forecasters say will be sunny weather next week, what could be a better kick off to a pleasant summer of 2024 in Falls Church?

But we can’t help but be reminded of Helen Simonson’s best selling 2017 novel of events on the eve of World War I in 1914, “The Summer Before the War,” characterized in Women’s Day as “What begins as a study of a small-town society becomes a compelling account of war and its aftermath.”

Yes, if not World War 3, we are nonetheless on the brink of a November U.S. presidential election that could easily be the most consequential in American history. Already, things that would have been considered unbelievable only a few years ago, such as a national abortion ban, a former president and presidential candidate on the verge of being convicted of a series of high crimes and misdemeanors, and the leadership of one of the nation’s two major political parties saying almost in unison that they might not accept the outcome of the November election if it does not go their way. Then there has been the effort at withholding the funds needed to thwart the brutal aggression of a Russian tyranny against a sovereign neighbor and the terrible conditions of war in Gaza, where the butchers of Hamas have drawn their Israeli targets into a dirty fight that is turning a large section of the U.S. population against them.

On top of this are the warning signs of a coming deep recession in the U.S. for reasons not unlike what led to the crash of 2008, with interest rates remaining high and home values making it almost impossible for any average American to afford a home. The inflation of food prices is also squeezing the public, and the vast chasm between the super rich one percent and the rest of us has widened to a record level.

In this context, we have two candidates who could not be more different. The Democratic incumbent Joe Biden is doing everything in his power to mitigate these deadly conditions, and his Republican counterpart is doing everything in his power to foment them, talking like an autocrat with no intention of abiding by the maxims of a democratic society no matter the outcome of the November election.

We are at a point where, as in the early days of World War II when Hitler was on the march, people are beginning to believe that a horrible outcome to all this is veritably inevitable.

Who will stand up and say “No” to all this? Who is willing to pledge this Memorial Day weekend to never accept a descent into tyranny?