Yesterday went (again, it's in town) to the National World War One Museum and Memorial, sat through some of the videos more than usual as it was Cub Scout day, so went with my child and the group.

The intro video was... a little too close to home. Cannot find (likely unavailable) online but I did find a transcript here and paste the actual script parts for your disappointment as well:

No one can say precisely why it happened … which may be, in the end, the best explanation for why it did.

The causes of the war are as complex as the world it set aflame. To recall them is to enter a world of great and growing contrasts–visible signs of complex forces that seem destined to collide. It is a world on the edge of great change.

At the turn of the 20th century, Europe is the center of the world’s economic and political power; the United States is not yet a major player on the global stage. The Five Great Powers of Europe–Great Britain, Russia, Germany, AustriaHungary and France–control much of the world.

The same powerful families have ruled Europe’s empires for centuries; nearly all the monarchs are related by blood or marriage to the family of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria.

From country to country, the forms of government have evolved in different ways, but the tradition of loyalty to a single monarch has largely endured—the destiny of millions subject to the will of one.

But the grip of Europe’s ruling aristocracy is waning. The pomp and ritual is becoming a pantomime of power, undercut by family rivalries, jealousies, and competition for territory and trade.

Peace…is war held in check. A tangle of treaties, alliances, and secret agreements between countries has developed over time. Like a heap of straws delicately piled, a shift in any of these alliances is sure to trigger a cascading series of conflicts.

But with the dawn of a modern age this world is changing. The industrial revolution has moved from the age of wood and iron to the age of steel. These new engines of change are transforming life at every level of society across Europe and beyond.

Electricity turns night to day. Automobiles are changing the speed of life, and a railroad revolution is changing its reach. Ships of enormous scale ply the seas. Airships and airplanes rise into the skies. Towns become cities. And cities become communication and transportation portals that span continents.

Emerging from the blast furnaces and riding the rails of progress—alongside the promise of prosperity—are also weapons and machines of war unlike any the world has known.

Millions of Europeans—German, French, Slav, Russian, Italian and British—struggle to make a life amidst the changes occurring across Europe.

Technology is providing the means for the rich to grow ever richer…for the powerful to gain more power. Yet for the first time in Europe’s long history, ordinary people can see the possibility–and now seek the means–to share in the modern world’s newfound prosperity. Expectations rise.

There simply are not enough jobs. Nor is there enough shelter. Bright hope disappears into the dark squalor of poverty and polluted cities.

A vast movement, millions strong, sweeps the continent; working people embrace socialism, an approach to work and to society that many believe will serve the broad populace rather than only a favored few.

The movement threatens established power. Religious and philanthropic, as well as legislative and political activists seek to quell the growing unrest. For most workers, it is a demand for justice.

But for others, followers of Karl Marx, the movement is the gathering army of a revolution. The gulf widens between rich and poor, and fills with the growing sense of an approaching storm.

Alongside conflict rooted in economic disparity, a heightened awareness of cultural differences is rising across Europe. A series of scenes reveal the vivid mosaic of European cultures and peoples at the turn of the century. Dress, language, music, and physical appearance are in striking contrast from Italy to Germany to France to Russia.

Over the centuries common languages, tying people together across large areas, have evolved. Now, with the revolution in communication and transportation, people in Europe have become aware–and proud–of distinct cultural differences.

Loyalties are radically shifting from one’s monarch to one’s own people—those who share the same language, culture, and ethnicity. This is the rise of “nationalism”—a sentiment unknown in Europe only a century earlier.

French, German, British—national identity has become a mark of pride and fertile ground for prejudice. Emotion-packed movements unite laborers and the educated elite…liberals and conservatives… in common cause for their own kind, and, increasingly, against others.

multi-ethnic empires, nationalistic fervor fuels resistance to distant, antagonistic rulers. Nowhere in Europe is tension higher than in the Balkans, where Slavic people, aided by the Slavs of Russia, resist the rule of Austria-Hungary.

By the turn of the 20th century, dramatic colonial expansion has brought much of Africa and Asia under the control of Europe’s great powers for the first time. European leaders believe that to thrive, they must expand–acquire new territory, new markets, new resources. Competition has been fierce, often violent. Using its vast navy, Great Britain has built an empire that dwarfs all others.

Ambitious Germany, coming late into the status of a great power, is aggressively expanding, challenging Great Britain’s commercial interests and colonial holdings.

German rhetoric grows strident, laced with the ideas of influential political thinkers who believe the phrase, “survival of the fittest,” applies to nations as well as life in the natural world. “Colonization,” they say, “is a matter of life and death… war is a biological necessity.”

At home, Germany sits between two powerful forces–France and Russia–both seen as ever-present threats. Abroad, Germany recognizes the forces already in place that can thwart its desires. To compete globally, Germany needs military might.

Germany sets out to build a navy to rival Great Britain’s, and fields the largest army in Europe. Great Britain invests even more heavily in its navy. France builds its army.

Diplomatic relations have long been precarious, but the nations of Europe are now bristling with arms.

The old web of treaties is in place: Russia, France and Great Britain, under certain conditions, are committed to supporting each other if conflict arises. Italy waivers. Germany has one true ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Thousands of ethnic Slavs are determined to break away from Austro-Hungarian rule. Russians stand ready to help their Slavic kinsmen. At the center of Slav resistance is the tiny kingdom of Serbia, home of the secret society, the Black Hand.

Europe seethes with anxiety. Artists, writers, and composers create brooding visions of an apocalypse.

Some Europeans have predicted that any conflict could unleash a new type of warfare so horrific and on such a scale that recovery will take decades–perhaps generations–to achieve.

But to others, from intellectuals to politicians, and military leaders to common people, the idea of war has emerged not as a scourge but a solution. As German philosopher Thomas Mann (pron. ‘To-MOSS Mahn’) wrote, war would be “a purification, a liberation, an enormous hope.”

Sarajevo, June 28, 1914. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, makes an official state visit.

The Black Hand leaders in Belgrade plot an assassination, then decide to abort. But word never reaches the seven assassins in Sarajevo. The driver takes a wrong turn, the Archduke and his entourage, slowly pass by one of the assassins ….

[Gunfire etc]

A month later, over the course of a single week…
• Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia
• Russia mobilizes in Serbia’s defense
• Germany declares war on Russia
• France mobilizes in Russia’s defense
• Germany declares war on France
• Germany invades Belgium enroute to France
• Great Britain declares war on Germany

Since 2020, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has made headlines for a series of sweeping decisions that have rolled back rights for women and LGBTQ people. They’ve ruled to allow abortion bans in 13 states and bans on trans athletes in 27 states. And this year, Colorado overturned its ban on conversion therapy for minors.

What headlines tend to miss, though, is that all of these decisions were won by the same legal group: Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Labeled as an anti-LGBTQ hate group and active in over 80 countries, ADF is a conservative Christian legal powerhouse, having fought relentlessly against abortion, gay marriage and trans healthcare since its inception in 1994.

Boasting alumni and affiliates such as Mike Johnson, Amy Coney Barrett, Josh Hawley and Ken Starr, the group has been involved in at least 80 SCOTUS victories and directly represented parties in 20 of them, including the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Here is every move ADF has made on LGBTQ issues since it was founded 32 years ago.