Tag Archives: Optimism

08.07.22
by

Am I Optimistic?

It’s so difficult to not get taken in by the headlines and be depressed, especially if you’re a baby boomer Democrat like me.

Conservatives targeting public libraries and their funding to ban books they don’t like

Indiana lawmakers ban abortion statewide with few exceptions

A 38% approval rating for Pres. Joe Biden, the worst ever recorded for a president.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)  gleefully proclaiming to a crowd of his fans, my pronouns are kiss my ass.  Not to mention Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) authoritatively stating most Americans are Christian nationalists, despite all rational facts to the contrary.

Evergreen

But those are headlines, half-truths and provocative click bait that don’t tell the whole picture.  Still, it is easy to believe any one of these digestible thoughts in their entirety, or at least partially, because it takes time and energy to unravel them.

The fact is many Americans don’t have time or inclination to address these and many other issues, especially at the speed with which they’re hitting us.

And most of us definitely do not have the energy. 

For the majority of us, what little intellectual space we have left has to be doled out towards paying the bills and eluding the next airborne national/international virus.

I mean, polio is back?  POLIO????

I truly cannot

Nevertheless, and in truth, this week was a win for Dems like me, and for the country.

Voters in Kansas – a red state by any measure and somewhat of a bellwether for broad conservative thought – resoundingly rejected an abortion law that could have opened the door for the state to altogether OUTLAW abortion.

Toto, we’re home! #NoPlaceLikeKansas

July had an unexpected and exceedingly strong U.S. jobs report of more than half a million jobs added, bringing us back to pre-pandemic levels and more than doubling even the boldest predictions.

Gas prices dropped 70 cents per gallon in the last month from a record high and are predicted to further plummet back down to manageable levels.

The Biden administration tracked down and killed the #1 most wanted terrorist – Ayman al-Zawahri, the current head of Al Qaeda, and mastermind of 9/11 as Osama Bin Laden’s #2 in command, after a more than two decade search. 

Congress is about to pass a historic $740 billion bill that will tackle climate change and move us towards clean energy, reform the tax code to benefit average Americans, and take drastic steps towards getting prescription drug prices under control.

And this was all accomplished over a two-and-a-half week period when Pres. Joe Biden was twice diagnosed with Covid, the latter a rare rebound case.

Sleepy who?

If I were an optimist, which I generally am not, I might even write, who knows what could happen in the months going forward now that he’s testing negative?

The above events and my intermittent Ping-Pong thinking on all of them, reminds me of a life lesson I have to actually keep reminding myself of daily. 

It is always darkest before the dawn.  

Or as Shelly, my second mother and an avid reader, used to tell me to cheer me up –

Life is like a great book (Note: No, NOT a box of chocolates!) – you turn the page and you never know what can happen.  Good and bad.

Is this… optimism?

It is disorienting to be met with such anger and vitriol by people who don’t agree with you, not to mention your, ahem, lifestyle, whatever that might be.

But it is not determining of what awful things will literally occur in the world or in your life.

It is merely a take on a viewpoint or event you can’t control.

It is a snapshot, a fact, a statement or a misstatement at any given moment.  It is indicative of what is from a source, but not necessarily predictive of what will be. 

Certainly, it is not predictive of your day, unless you want it to be.

Whatever Francis!

This of course doesn’t mean I still don’t want to push Ted Cruz into a vat of his own bullsh-t or tell Marjorie Taylor Greene to go f-ck herself while she is suspended upside down in Macy’s window.

It only means I know the difference between my fantasies and reality. 

And that what I will actually choose to devote my time to do, much less believe, on a given day, is in my hands, not theirs.

“Don’t Stop Believin'” – viral Janitor performance (from ABC News)

12.31.17
by

A New Year?

It was a simple thought, really. But is anything simple when it comes from 2017’s most admired man in America?

Talk about the Audacity of Hope. Or Despair. How you read this message depends on what you see as the world and how you want to change it.

(Note: And yes, I’m calling it a message. I refuse to say what the above guy writes are tweets).

So – what HAS he written that has provoked so many negative, vitriolic responses? Things like:

— Empty words from a souless man  

— Liberalism: Logic’s Retarded Cousin

Or my personal favorite:

— Isis has run out of money now that Obama’s not in office.

Yes, those were real. And no, I didn’t include the very worst of them. One of my 2018 resolutions is to be more positive and the year has barely even started yet.

So then — let’s break it down.

Get Involved.

Get Engaged.

Stand up.

Don’t we ALL want (our fellow) citizens to do this? Or, maybe only the people who are fighting for what’s right. People on OUR SIDE.

You feel me???

I’ll cop to some of that. It was appalling to me that this was the year I saw tens of thousands of people unfazed that actual NAZIs or NAZI supporters were marching through the streets of Virginia – with weapons and lit Tiki torches they bought at Home Depot – shouting anti-Semitic and racist chants at Blacks, Jews and anyone else who would listen.

No, I didn’t want them to NOT be allowed to march. I was just mortified that so many other people I’ve probably met in traveling across our country don’t really care. Or, in part, agree with them.

I wonder if the drowning of sorrows has been good for the wine industry #illtakeabottle

So yeah, there’s a chunk of me that does NOT want them standing up any more than they already have or getting engaged any more than they probably did for fear that they will win. And continue to do so.

Each of us can make a difference, and all of us ought to try.

On the other hand, the healthier part of me relishes their engagement.  Because I can’t believe that the more engaged they get the more educated and real their worlds will become and they will meet enough Blacks and Jews, or be exposed to so many more real facts on their issues, that they will realize the error of their ways and spread the word to those who are like-minded.

Pass me the rosie shades

Historically, hate and exclusion always does LOSE in the very long term because human beings have the power of critical thinking and, at the end of the day, will do the right thing…after they’ve exhausted all other possibilities.

Okay, I didn’t make up that last part. It’s an unconscious paraphrase of what Winston Churchill once presumably said about us:

You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.

Or a paraphrase of a key line from Anne Frank’s famous diary:

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

Trying to find that optimism

Anne, like Martin Luther King, Jr. and others after her, didn’t live to see the days of peace and tranquility. But we all stand in proof that they did happen. Which does not answer a question that always comes to mind when thinking about such wise, forward-thinking individuals:

What would they think of iPhones? What would they be like on social media? And – who would THEY say their most admired American is of the last few years? Or ten years?

So go keep changing the world in 2018.

I suspect that they might agree with the majority of Americans in every Gallup poll of the last decade and choose Barack Obama.

Mic drop forever

Yes, it was announced a few days ago that he once again topped the poll for the 10th time in a row. But it’s the fact that he did it this time that makes it so record-breaking. 2017 was the first year EVER that an elected American president did not win in his first year in office.

So clearly the world has not changed enough for some people.

Perhaps that is because our current president – nee ELECTORAL COLLEGE POTUS –wasn’t so much elected by the majority (Note: He LOST the popular vote by more than THREE MILLION) but barely chosen by a Constitutional anomaly (i.e. the Electoral College – a system designed to protect the voices of smaller states but, given the radical population shifts away from them in the last century, has caused a more lopsided tilt of power in recent years towards a much smaller but very vocal conservative base).

There’s that optimism again #help

This is not to tar and feather all of that base with raging responses citing Isis, a lack of soul and the 2017 politically incorrect use of the word retard.   Just some of them.

Do I really want them to continue to be engaged?

Oy.

Do we(I) have a lot of work do to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88EB0TEGQDA