I Suck At Titles.

Sunday I spoke with my mother about the recent election. I asked her her opinion on the outcome. She told me that she feels that things are going to get better. She is not a supporter of Bush, yet she feels that this term will be different. Now he will not have to be reelected. Now he can grow more moderate, growing away from those who lean far to the right, and, though not necessarily healing our country, not making things worse. She is not idealistic, my mother is a pragmatist. But she does have hope.

Yesterday I spoke to a friend who is roughly my age. His opinion was vastly different. He sees things getting much worse over the next four years. There is moving to have Roe. v. Wade overturned, and a constitutional ban on gay marriage will be proposed, if not passed. The next four years will be horrible for this country. He sees himself not as a pessimist, he’s rational and realistic. There is no hope.

I rest between the two of them. I have run the gamut of emotions over this, from feeling hopeful, to crazy depressed. I have felt determined to stick it out and make the best of it, and have also thought about moving to Canada. Or Sweden. You get great maternity leave in Sweden. Really, who doesn’t love lutefisk? Mmmmmm.

I have no idea what the future holds. I think the administration is in error in pretty much everything that they do. I don’t think Roe v. Wade will get overturned. Public outcry will be too great for that. I hope and pray that there will be no bigoted change to the Constitution, but honestly, I never thought any states would outlaw it, so I don’t know what to think there. I am not nearly as optimistic as my mother about the next four years. I wish I could be. Neither do I look on it with as much foreboding as my friend.

My mother is a shrink. She has seen so much that is so appalling, that for her to have no hope about anything (I’m not just talking politics...humanity in general) is refreshing. But then again, she is twice my age. She has lived through the last 50 years and has seen the ruin of our country predicted, and not come to pass. Something she says is that if we can survive Nixon, we can survive anything.

My friend has two years on me. He’s a writer, a former journalist, a very brilliant man, and his opinion of the world around us in one based on intelligent sources and research, and yet...

I would say that my unwillingness to accept his viewpoint, and await the doom is purely emotional...and yet...with the loss of hope do we lose our ability to change?

This is one of the worst things I have ever written...it has no conclusion at all, run on sentences and is very scatty.

Not to mention the lack of title.