As odd as it might sound, I’ve always identified with the Second World War. Although I protested the Vietnam conflict, it never held for me the visceral impact as its monumental predecessor.

War for me was Sherman tanks and half-tracks, mud-splattered dogfaces and B-17 Flying Fortresses. As a child, I collected Life magazines from the 1940s with a passion that other kids applied to baseball cards. I read my father’s original 1945 copy of Bill Mauldin’s “Up Front” until the cover fell off and flunked my 10th grade final exams because I was absorbed in “The Caine Mutiny,” a book I’ve nearly memorized. I

t is impossible for me to watch “The Best Years of Our Lives,” William Wyler’s 1946 classic movie about returning veterans, without being reduced to a sniveling puddle of tears. Although allied with peace movements, whenever I’ve heard an activist harass combat veterans as “warmongers,” as I have on occasion, my gut reaction is to whop them upside the head (which I have never done, nice fellow that I am.)

When I was 9 years old, the last soldier of the Civil War died. To have crossed lifetimes with someone from that cataclysmic struggle that ended 160 years ago is still hard to believe. Now it seems inevitable that in the coming years, I will witness the final veteran of World War II crossing over into the spirit realm. Not just him, but also the last Holocaust and Hiroshima survivors, the collateral damage of the worst war in human history.

The “Greatest Generation,” as they’ve been designated, has been lauded, feted, immortalized and overhyped over the past years with some detractors observing that they weren’t so great after all. They fought in a segregated army while innocent Japanese-Americans were imprisoned in concentration camps. The veterans then returned to a nation where all marginalized people were either invisible or persecuted.

The fighting men themselves had a hard time readjusting to peacetime; suffering nightmares, addictions and the full range of PTSD, a condition only barely recognized at the time, much less treated. Practically every person from the boomer generation has said, “My father never talked about what he went through.” They only learned after the elder had passed and left behind a trunk full of artifacts.

But as they exit the grand stage they so magnificently filled, their generation is coming back into national focus. Not so much because they are dying out but while alive, they fought, sacrificed and died to combat the very forces of fascism that now dominate our government. One wonders the disgust they must feel seeing Donald Trump sell Ukraine out to Vladimir Putin in the same venal way Neville Chamberlain sold Czechoslovakia out to Hitler in 1938.

I don’t need to list the crimes, acts of cruelty and outright attacks on American democracy committed by Trump and Elon Musk. They’re out there for all to see and have been vociferously condemned on these pages by myself and many others. And for those who wish that half the nation would just shut up, get over it and get with the program: Guess what — that ain’t gonna happen.

That half, plus many more who realized that they were lied to, manipulated and used, will continue to resist as long as we are able to do so. I attended the Presidents Day rally at the Statehouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico with a lively crowd of all ages, races and backgrounds. It was heartening to witness at least one World War II vet dressed in full bemedaled uniform sitting in a wheelchair with a proud fist in the air.

So yes, the Greatest Generation was flawed, but at a crucial moment in our history, they put their lives on the line to safeguard our democracy against authoritarian dictatorships. They suffered terrors and hardships that we can only imagine but they never gave up, even when victory was far from a sure thing.

Now it is our turn to safeguard our democracy against an authoritarian dictatorship, only this time the threat isn’t coming from across the oceans but within our own borders. It has started with the assault on the free press, the targeting of political opponents, the destruction of the safety net for working Americans and the stifling of our civil liberties.

And it will get worse before it gets better. But the march toward fascism in America will fail because it violates the American principles that we, and the Greatest Generation, have always held dear.

Daniel A. Brown lived in Franklin County for 44 years and has written a monthly My Turn column for over two decades. He lives outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, Lisa and dog, Cody.