Mom celebrated her 100th birthday the first weekend of the New Year. Born January 2, 1925, her life embraced college, life as a wife and mother, a career as an elementary school librarian, and a meaningful retirement as a volunteer, avid traveler, and family matriarch. If asked today what tomorrow will bring, she would most likely slowly shake her head and sigh.
Mom’s future is her past.
The United States is in a similar situation. A cohort of people-in-charge look back, not for kudos and clues to innovative endeavors and how they might be achieved, but for a way of life they yearn to recreate. Unfortunately imitation of the past will lead to a society more flawed than the existing one. No time period or lifestyle is perfect. It was the best of times it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities).
Whitewashing history in an attempt to duplicate a faux yesterday is fool’s folly. The creators of this folly are knowingly oblivious to the madness generated and stupidity normalized.
Through the tumult the rest of us proceed day by day. I worry about tomorrow. What kind of country and planet will my grandkids’ inherit?
In the financial world, a place many current folks-in-charge hail from, futures are contracts to buy or sell a commodity, asset, or security on a particular date, at a specified price. The unknowns – will the item’s price rise or fall during the waiting period? Will a disaster change everything? Or an event positively impact price? Will the item become extra-precious or less so?… The more risk taken, the more reward. Often that is exactly what happens. But the bettor can lose. A lot.
Our country bought this administration with votes. The next buy date is November 7, 2028. The President is ineligible for a third term due to provisions of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. Of course anything can change in the interim.
Unfortunately citizens who cast a different vote in 2024 must accept the risk thrust upon them. Turning power over to an oligarchy of the ultra-wealthy and self-interested willing to ignore and reinvent facts, accept conspiracy theories, cozy up to a felon, and fashion their idea of society, is hazardous to the health, welfare, and well-being of the nation’s, and the world’s, people.
My tomorrows are limited by my age, but the new administration’s policies will impact generations in ways I cannot or do not wish to foresee.
My hope for the future? A renewal of values our country inherited from its founders – a belief in democracy, respect for others, including the opposition (although not all of the founding fathers practiced this), separation of church and state, individual rights and freedoms, individual responsibility, the concept of equality for all people. We don’t live in a perfect union, but strides have been made in the past 200+ years. The folks-in-charge want to roll back two centuries of progress and remake our society into their restrictive and conforming image, and their image only.
I want to witness a future when nastiness, dishonesty, and conspiracy theories do not rule. I hope the reawakening occurs sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile I proceed day by day, at a slower pace than in previous years, but keep going, with any luck moving forward.
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