Keep Hoping for Change

They were the best of times, they were the worst of times, in fact, they are pretty darned  similar to the current times, Charles Dickens wrote in the mid-1800s in his tale of guillotines and revenge and atonement and mistaken identity set in the 1790s and I feel the same about our current times, as we continue to argue about the same things we were arguing about when I was a radical, young, long haired, “non-conformist” (yeah, right, bullshit) hippie type.

There are lots of great things happening in the world.  Scientists are discovering more and more about the human body and it appears that we are on the verge of conquering disease entirely.  Scientists in  China just invented the  world’s lightest material.    Computers, and phones continue to get smarter.  Musicians continue to create amazing songs, writers continue to crank out great books, artists continue to find entire new ways of viewing the universe.  But….

There is a town in Georgia (the Georgia where Deliverance was set, not the one in Central Asia) where the students are agitating to end the practice of racially segregated high school proms.  Seriously, they’ve still got that.  A clear majority of people now favor legalizing marijuana, yet it’s still illegal, there are more people in jail for marijuana than anything else, and the people in power show no hint of starting to be reasonable.  As much as we move forward, we are still firmly rooted in the past.

I hope the future will be better.  I tell myself that some day all the nasty old fuckers will die off and the youth of the world will bring about a utopia.   Some day, I’m sure, there will be no more racism because we will all be so interbred that race will no longer be a realistic descriptor.  Some day, marijuana will be legal because all the cranky old farts with prejudices against it will die off, but people who smoke in college grow up, get elected to office and become just as uptight as the previous generation.

I tell myself that some day all the nasty old fuckers will die off and the youth of the world will bring about a utopia, but I sure won’t be around to see it, because now I am a cranky old fart and it hasn’t happened yet.