The Fly in my Depressing World View Ointment

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I was overwhelmed by how bad everything was a few weeks ago, but pretty soon the real world muscled in on my thoughts.

Things are not as bad as they should be.

Racism
For those of us who have come to the reluctant conclusion that racism is bad for everyone, it becomes plain that a lot of the worries of the world can be boiled down to racism.  The manic attitude of Islamist extremists (or, more logically, Extremist Muslims) can be viewed as a sort of racism.  The attitude of those who hate Barack Obama is at least partially racist.  Religious chauvinism, apart from being driven by religion in the first place, has elements of racism in it.  Those who get all fired up by either immigration reform or the lack of it might have racists behind them.  All this Us-Against-Them-ism is a close cousin of racism, or a generalization of racism: I don't like people different from me.  Getting out and meeting different sorts of people tends to wear down racialist and prejudiced attitudes among most intelligent people (though there is a minority of creeps whose prejudice is reinforced by actually meeting people of other races).  But I'm observing that there is an ever-growing core of young people who are willing to speak out for racial inclusiveness and to champion the causes of minorities.

Conservatism
Liberals are a demoralized and tired lot.  Republicans and conservatives have more stamina, because they're fighting for themselves.  That's the big fact about conservatives: they're fighting for themselves, and strictly for the short term, except when it comes to keeping their money in the family.  They don't want a better world for their offspring; they just want their offspring to have a lot of money so that they can better handle a crappy world.

Liberalism
Liberals, in contrast, are fighting for a better life for other people, a safety net when there are no jobs, for the elderly, for the poor.  They want health care even for those who cannot afford health insurance.  It's not that liberals are unconcerned for situations where someone below the poverty line might, someday, demand the right to plastic surgery.  Having to deal with those sorts of extremes are tedious, but we don't let these sorts of contradictions get in the way of providing health care for everyone.

So the liberals ought to be a tired and demoralized lot.  But then Obama comes up with this free two years of Community College plan, and suddenly the sun is shining, the lark is on the thorn, and Conservatives are totally pissed off, because they didn't think of it first.  But of course, it has to get through Congress first.  (Or am I missing something?)

This Congress, of course, is as likely to go for it as an armadillo would go for a kangaroo steak (I'm hoping armadillos don't go for kangaroo steaks, if not I must find a different simile).  This is obviously not the congress we voted in.  We did not vote any congress in; we sat on our couches at home, watching The Game of Thrones, or whatever, while these geniuses from Carolina and Florida and Alabama and Texas voted in a No To Science, Education And Taxes Congress, and a Yes To Creationism, Wars And Guns congress, and incidentally a total science-o-phobe to be in charge of NASA.  Way to go.

We must now watch, while an anxious Congress furiously attempts to persuade everyone who dreams of going to college to actually believe that education is bad for them.  It's going to be a tough sell, because now we liberals are fighting for ourselves.  Once congress begins dismantling legislation controlling environmental pollution, Social Security, and starts making life easier for the energy companies, we've got our backs against the wall.  It's going to get ugly, but it's good to get these battles out in the open.  These conservatives had better watch themselves.  We're not going to be tired forever.

Of late, elections have gone in a direction that seems to indicate that we're now a nation of millionaires (even if the statistics show that we're a nation of paupers).  What are we?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Millionaires can stay home.  Paupers must get out and vote.  Don't let them scare you with threats of jail.  There are reports of some conservative activists in Carolina and Mississippi and other southern states threatening specific voters with common names such as David Jackson (a common first name, and a last name very common among the African American community) with charging them with election fraud (because there are several men with that same name, registered in different voting precincts).  Elderly African Americans are easily intimidated, and only a class action suit against this sort of ploy (which discourages African Americans from voting) will restrain GOP bullying in the future.  The bullying is getting ugly.