When we live through dramatic moments, it’s sometimes hard to know if they are destined to become turning points in history. Some leave no doubt of their importance, coming in blinding flashes that sear themselves into our collective memory. The Kennedy assassination. The Berlin Wall tumbling. Watergate. The twin towers of New York falling. Others arrive like the deafening finale of fireworks, making it hard to distinguish what is important from what is simply loud and full of light.

Historical events can either shock or uplift us. They can expand fear and anger or give us greater hope and inspiration for the future. Sometimes they do both.

Last week, two events occurred on the same day that may prove to be turning points in history. One brought shock and sadness and the other new hope for peace. The horrific bombing in Brussels crowded our airwaves with sirens and panic and filled our hearts with sadness and grief.

Four thousand miles to the west, inspiration was rising on the tiny island nation of Cuba. There, America’s first black president was addressing the Cuban people, directly, for the first time in the television era.

If there was a thread that tied those two events together, stretching from Brussels to Havana, it was the continuing struggle between totalitarianism and democracy and the many ways in which that struggle must now be waged.

The war on terror is morphing from the containment of religious intolerance and terrorism in one region to an increasingly global war between democratic societies and despotic ones. Yesterday’s “cold war” between ideological blocs has given way to a hot war between stateless zealots who believe that their ideology must dominate all others and democratic socieities.

The zealots are determined to terrorize nations that believe in freedom, religious tolerance, self-determination and human rights.

If there is any hope to be pulled from the wreckage of Brussels, it is that democratic nations will increase their resolve to attack the Islamic State (also known as ISIL or ISIS) at its roots. Europeans will help, because they know what the face of tyranny looks like. They know what waiting too long to unite brings. And they know firsthand that if you don’t go on the offense against tyranny, it will soon enough brings its atrocities to your own land.

For Americans, uniting against the ISIS threat means taking partisan politics out of the conversation, even in a presidential election year. It means doing more of what we saw lastweek, as candidates from right to left spoke with similar resolve. Bernie Sanders boiled it down best: “We must destroy ISIS.”

In Cuba, meanwhile, there is reason to hope that the new opening between America and Cuba will produce, over time and with patience, a flourishing democratic Cuba that manages to blend its unique character and social priorities with a new freedom in the modern world.

On the day last week when the events in Brussels and Cuba were happening, my family settled in at home, as we do on most nights, to watch the evening news. Images of Brussels dominated the coverage and it was only late in the broadcast that we saw a small segment on President Obama at a baseball game.

What we didn’t get to see was history in the making, in an extraordinary speech that Obama delivered that day to the people of Cuba, which was interrupted over 35 times by applause. It was a speech that reminded Cubans that they, too, have inalienable human rights, but that they won’t get them without pushing for them.

Those rights include the right to speak freely, assemble without fear, elect their leaders, practice their religion in their own way and, yes, criticize their own government.

“I come with a white rose,” the president said, echoing the lines of a famous Cuban poet, Jose Marti, “and to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. For all our differences, the Cuban and American people share common values in their own lives … A sense of patriotism and pride. A love of family, a passion for our children. And a commitment to education.

“Many have suggested that I come here to tear something down,” he added. “But I’m appealing to the young people of Cuba who will lift something up and build something new. I know our history, but I refuse to be trapped by it. I have always believed in what Martin Luther King Jr. called the fierce urgency of now. We should not fear change, we should embrace it.”

Sometimes, history is happening even when it isn’t on your television screen.

Alan Caron, a Waterville native, is the owner of the Caron Group and the author of “Maine’s Next Economy” and “Reinventing Maine Government.” He can be reached at:

alancaroninmaine@gmail.com

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