There's a lot of negativity going around now. In the presidential race, both sides are covered in mud, and all eight hands of the major players are dirty. Internally, the country is a mess. We can't agree with each other on so many things, and the distinctions between red and blue become as meaningless and essential as they ever are, but this time with higher stakes. A lot of the world doesn't respect our country, and today I read an editorial written by an American imploring the world to step up and confront the United States about war crimes. We're beginning to wonder if envelopes of cash under the mattress might not be a good idea. Throw in gas prices, climate change and a nuclear Iran, and things begin to seem a little overwhelming. It's enough to make a person nostalgic. I remember the war on drugs, and when Ecstasy was what parents were most afraid of. I remember a financial crisis I was dimly aware of, accompanied by calm men and women with enormous hair and enormous shoulder pads. I remember a presidential election of which the highlight, to me as a child, was a man with absolutely fantastic dumbo ears. But I also remember watching the news with my mom who told me as we watched the night vision footage that this was where my uncle was stationed. I remember laughing and joking with my friends that we would move to Canada if Bush won in 2000. I've heard people say it about McCain and mean it more than we did then. I remember a McCain who wasn't afraid to think for himself, and who wasn't afraid to talk to Jon Stewart on a comedy news show in front of a vehemently liberal crowd over and over again and make jokes in the process. He is afraid now. The loss of that McCain is one of the biggest and most tragic mysteries of his running for president. He may lose the election, but he lost my respect long ago. I remember TV news before FoxNews and MSNBC (but not before CNN). Things have changed, but some things never do. Human greed, failure, gluttony, bad judgments, they don't change. But neither do human resiliency, optimism, the knowledge that change is possible though rarely easy. America has bounced back from some really devastating times, some our fault, some other people's fault, some a combination. And, though I am rarely one to don rose colored glasses, I just can't shake the belief that we're going to bounce back from this mess too. We thought the world would never be the same after 1918, 1929, 1945, 1963, 1968, 1989, 2001. Guess what, the world did change. And there is no going back to before any of those numbers appeared on the calendar. But we're still here, and we're still ok. In this time of negativity, I think these are important things to think about.
I'm going to leave you with this clip of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show on 9/20/01. It might be hard to watch for any number of reasons, but it's one of those clips it pays to re-watch every now and then.
