High Hopes

What do I hope 2008 will bring?

It's hard to hope with so many things going wrong for so long now. The events going on around us seem important for maybe two or three weeks and then something else pops up to replace them. Twenty or thirty years pass before we hear the truth about the matters we have to make decisions about today ... twenty or thirty years, if ever.

Individually we can be pretty smart, but en masse we're almost always cattle. Mass media play to the lowest common denominator, the part of ourselves that properly can't even be called a self.

Knowing this, still I have hopes for democracy. But not high expectations. Nothing about me is faith based.

I hope we can elect a decent U.S. President in '08. I hope both main parties find the person who they honestly believe is best fit to lead the country, not the most "electable," not the best totem representing some vague abstraction, not the most telegenic, not the one with the most money--I hope the Greens, Socialists, Libertarians, etc., put someone up too. I want the electoral process to become more complicated than it's been--more choices, more issues on the table, more democratic, more diversity, more change--less fund-raising, less emotionalist flag-waving and baby-kissing, less pandering to corporations and theocrats.

I hope the United States can make up (somehow) for the terrible fuckups in the Middle East and Central and South America. I hope the U.S. can get off its high horse, switch off the world-power bullshit, and redeem itself in the eyes of the world.

I hope people develop their reasoning powers and stop relying on faith and the good will of those who oppress them. I hope skepticism and sanity flourish. It's time to put our gods away and behave fully like reasonable adults. I hope people begin to trust their senses and instincts.

I hope the people of the world band together to stop the senseless exploitation of natural resources and the senseless exploitation of the poor, the weak, the sick, and the unpopular.

I hope blacks, women, and homosexuals decide to dis-appropriate the words "nigger," "bitch," and "faggot." I'm not for censorship and I don't believe any word is intrinsically evil. However, these words empower nobody, and using them puts a smug, self-justified smirk on the faces of the racists, misogynists, and bashers. Stop "scaring" the liberals in order to curry favor with the rich and powerful. Putting yourself down or putting your own kind down is reprehensible, sniveling, and small.

I hope people learn to laugh more, loosen up, start taking fewer inconsequential things seriously. Folks, your gods are not worth dying for, nor is your gasoline. Your jobs, your families, your life styles should not be making you sick, physically or mentally.

I hope people throw more parties throughout the year, invite friends over, have long conversations face to face, give and receive gifts graciously and joyously, stop the paranoid mistrust, blame-putting, and self-pity. Get along. Play nice.