DOOMSDAY

As a terrible news addict, there comes times when it gets really hard to stomach the news. Sure there's always bad news... but sometimes it just piles on and on. Consider:

-- Colonel Gaddafi murdering courageous freedom fighters in Libya while the dickless West does nothing because they're so worried about what Jihadists in Pakistan will think.
-- An 11-year old girl is gang-raped in Texas and half the town thinks it's her fault because she dresses 'provocatively'.
-- Employee Unions are being dismantled... (see previous post)
-- In Michigan, the governor has been given "emergency powers" to take over any town or city and appoint a "financial expert" to force the town to do whatever he says. And yes, a "financial expert" could literally be a corporation.
-- Democrats are... well, that's another can of worms...
The list goes on. And on...

But it's important to be an optimist. Some people call that outlook "pipe-dreaming"... But y'know, if you read a lot of history, biographies, or even recall recent modern politics... I think you see that things usually do turn out okay. Not great, but okay.

If I had a penny for every time some person or political party or pundit decried [insert political issue here] as the end of the civilized world, I'd be part of the upper-middle class. In the passion of politics, it's easy to forget some key points:

-- with any law, most of the claims made by proponents and opponents alike are gross exaggerations of half-truths. Everyone has an agenda.
-- even if someone isn't exaggerating, predicting the full effects of any event is impossible. No one knows how any law or event will really affect the world and its infinitely complex workings.
-- Any law can be undone, modified, or expanded upon if the pressure is great enough.
-- All else is "not equal"... in other words, people always talk about what's "going to happen" if ______ happens. But those folks always seem to assume that everything else in the world is gonna stay the same. Kinda hard to explain... look up "ceteris paribus".

Anyway, I'll shut up now. My point is, I don't think anything's as bad (or good) as people say it will be. That's what keeps me going; it's why I still manage to read the news.

But that's not a free pass. Good people still gotta keep the fight going, though, or the pessimists really will win.