What's New?

I wrote this at the end of 2005 and not much has changed, except I spellchecked it this time:

Another New Year. I guess we all share a universal sense of optimism when a new year rolls around. Even those jaded cynics among us who (perhaps like me) who have begun so many New Years with a list of resolutions and the hope of peace and prosperity, and then witnessed the dissolution of those hopes in the fire hose of reality.
It  was another one of those years when the idea of World Peace seems like a childish aspiration. Threats - real and imagined - abound. China and Russia are drifting back to totalitarianism.

None of our old friends likes us anymore. Perhaps Randy Newman (Let's drop the big one and see what happens) should be the next president. We need someone with a sense of humor.

We don't even like each other! The Dems are calling the Republicans liars and corrupt. The Neocons seem to have patented a new definition for patriotism which sounds to me too much like nationalism. I recall that the Nazi's came to power by focusing the people's attention on the internal and external threats and then ruthlessly punished eliminated any form of dissent or opposition. As a country, we have polarized to the extremes. There is no middle. The bell curve is now a statistical pucker when it comes to politics. Each side says "Either you are with us (and shut-up). or you are helping the enemy." Good old-fashioned compromise is out of the question. How can you find common ground with traitors, socialists, Nazis?

Amazingly, after centuries of barbaric warfare (much of it over differences in religious beliefs), we have learned nothing. Some of us have distilled (or should I say, "dumbed-down") our political philosophy down to a few defining issues.  Unfortunately it will take another national tragedy for the sides to come together.

But, despite the gloomy assessment for the prospects of peace, I look ahead to a new year with a sense of renewal and optimism, just like the rest of the naive children.