(Don't Stop) Thinking About Tomorrow

As I skim the blogs and fantasize about the string of possible indictments in the coming weeks, gazing fondly at the web of associations on Think Progress, it occurs to me that I haven’t felt this sort of optimism since Clinton and Co. took to the stage with Fleetwood Mac. True, I was a political ingénue at the time. But lately, that same sense of (dare I say it?) hope is rising like sap in my veins.

It's been a while. Since the stealing of election no. 1 in 2000, I have had an increasing sense of doom. Between 911, endless war, global warming, tsunamis, hurricanes, social security, gas prices, losing jobs, electronic voting, getting chronically ill and worrying about health care, realizing that I no longer live in a democracy with elections, the erosion of civil liberties, an imminent avian bird flu epidemic, peak oil, Abu Ghraib, the steady decline of a free press and investigative journalism, not to mention vacant supreme court justice seats and appointments-- well, lets just say it's been hard to see the silver lining. This is not the America I knew and loved.

Like many progressives, I remained unshakable in my resolve to reject the culture of fear propagated by our present administration, a determination not to be bullied by threats of the next terrorist attack, or "red alerts." But in all the ways listed above, I became part of the cowering masses. While soccer moms in the Midwest were slowly convinced that GWB would keep their children safe on game day, we liberals were convinced that no one at all could help us now. Keeping obsessively informed about all the imminent disasters has led me to a dim and dark outlook. Knowledge is still power, but suddenly, it was overpowering. Indeed, I stopped thinking about tomorrow, and when I did, I envisioned war, political unrest, and the supposed unraveling of society that we "saw" in the Superdome and coming off the highways out of Houston. That was the America I felt I was inheriting.

But as Bush’s polls plummet and the corruption becomes apparent and court dates are scheduled and the lawyers begin to parse-- as we slowly but surely as a Nation begin to see these power- mongering, money-loving, self-serving bastards for who they are-- suddenly I am dreaming of a better world again. With a flip of a switch, we all begin to wake up together, and this is what I have been waiting for, and not just since last November. Suddenly the Right is seeing that the only people standing with Bush are folks who think they are part of his posse, or who wish they were. (The average American has about as much reason to swear allegiance to this boys club as they do to p. diddy’s entourage. At least p. diddy believes in democracy and will give you a cool “vote or die” t shirt. These guys won’t even give you shwag. They don’t give a flip about their base, Christ, America, Freedom, Democracy or Moral Values. They serve one lord: the Almighty Dollar.)

Suddenly, with just a few more people putting it together, I can see the other side-- the light at the end of the tunnel-- and I start to think we might make it out of this alive. All the problems still stand, but if we could have someone, anyone other than this guy at the helm, we might make it. I mean, no one else, not even McCain or Giuliani, is going to suggest that the military will be in charge of keeping avian flu victims in their neighborhoods, under quarantine. Or run up this kind of deficit. Or consistently appoint loyal friends with zero qualifications to important posts of national and international significance.

So, I am spending my time envisioning a world with a faceless and nameless president at the helm, helping us navigate these troubled waters, a president who sometimes pisses me off and says the wrong thing, and maybe even makes a couple of bad decisions and doesn’t share my point of view on a lot. As the right wing blogs begin to spring to life with a barbaric yawp of outrage and indignation that their party has been hijacked, my heart sings. It occurs to me: if the Republicans become as disillusioned with their party as we Democrats are of ours, what beauty might spring forth? As gas prices rise and the bird flu mutates and more hurricanes threaten, I am suddenly aware that I am sharing smiles at the gas pump with perfect strangers as we curse the oil men at the White House. I remember that I spend a good part of my week hanging out at a church where people pray daily for a peaceful world and take steps to be of service in this broken globe we have inherited. While the boys at the White House have been driving us over the cliff, the rest of us have been hunkering down at home, trying to figure out how to build a better world when we get through this phase. Despots fall. Empires crumble. Economies collapse. Parties die. We’re going over the edge alright. But who said we’d lie broken and bruised to die a slow death on the rocks below? We could learn how to fly.