I'm feeling kind of apocalyptic-y tonight. In general, barring periodic hormonal issues and too deep forays into political blogs, I'm a pretty cheery person. But the last few days have been rough.
It's hard, when you read things like this, to stop from thinking that it's so bad, we'll never find our way out from the bottom of this well. This mean and stupid and accountability-free political environment is sending us hurtling towards the Thunderdome.
I have to remind myself that things have been a lot fucking worse. While there might be some John Birch types out there with hard ons for trying insufficiently conservative thinkers for not loving America enough, it's not actually happening. And it did. And even if mainstream gubernatorial candidates feel comfortable arguing that we should stop feeding poor, black kids, I don't see Jim Crow coming back. And even if a New Hampshire GOoPer thinks gay adoption is just another name for governmental child chattel, I can take solace in knowing that the breakout stars of a smash new sitcom hit are a gay couple who've adopted a kid.
And then just right as I'm shaking off the funk, I think about how dysfunctional our senate and congress are and how Barack Obama just does NOT seem to want to take the wheel on this one and we might AGAIN piss away our chance to reform healthcare and not even Modern Family can cheer me up.
And so I must take the advice of the song I named this post for and bat it down. Remind myself that I'd rather live now than any other time on earth and that, in the immortal words of the late, lamented Molly Ivins:
Things are not getting worse; things have always been this bad. Nothing is more consoling than the long perspective of history. It will perk you up no end to go back and read the works of progressives past. You will learn therein that things back then were also terrible, and what's more, they were always getting worse. This is most inspiriting.
It really is.
