Here's another angle.

It's not that I'm optimistic? It's that I've been so disillusioned for so long that the little things that feel so unsatisfactory for everyone who could have voted for the first time in 2016 but didn't are fucking monumental to me.

Yeah. Biden used the word "anti-trust" in a State of the Union. Big whoop. It's not like he suddenly said "medicare for all." but no president has said "anti trust" in a SotU IN MY LIFETIME and I'm damn near fifty fucking years old!

I'll level with you. I've been screaming about how the Republicans have been coming for Roe V. Wade since nineteen fucking eighty eight. They said they'd have vengeance for Bork and fuckin' A, that's one thing they've been clear-eyed about. So last year when everyone suddenly woke up and said "ZOMFG they took Roe!" my natural reaction is "fucking of course they did, you simps, it's been the one thing they've been un-fucking-wavering on since before you were born, where the fuck were you when we could have goddamn done something about it?"

Look. I'ma show you a picture. No, first, I'ma set the scene. 1983? Reagan calls the USSR "the evil empire." 6 months later? we start some shit.. The next august? "We begin bombing in 5 minutes.". Now, are you ready for that picture?

"Ooops, no, not that picture," he said disingenuously for effect. "I meant this picture."

You want fucking hopeless? try living in a world on the razor's edge of armageddon with FIFTY NINE PERCENT of your countrymen cheering it on. Forty percent of Americans voted against Reagan, reflected as two. point. five. percent of the electoral vote.

Do you taste it yet? Do you taste the bleakness? The utter, overwhelming despair?

You're ten, by the way. And the TV wants you to know that eleven is doubtful.

But hey, you make it to eleven and we're selling Stinger missiles on the down-low to the Iranians to buy weapons for the Contras and somehow the CIA is selling cocaine in Los Angeles and Ronnie is absolutely, positively, undeniably senile and they're already talking about putting his mug on Mt. Rushmore.

Here's the difference between you and me. I'm grading on a curve because I've seen some shit. You demand purity because - to be frank - you haven't.

You still could.

But this isn't what it looks like.

You wanna know why Biden is treating Israel with kid gloves? cuz nobody likes dead marines. And for the record, Palestinians were:

- the direct and proximate cause of the Jordanian Civil War

- the direct and proximate cause of The Lebanese Civil War

- a complication and exacerbation of the invasion of Kuwait

And, for the record, Palestinians support October 7 by a 4:1 margin.

Shit's complicated. Shit's bleak. Shit's been complicated and bleak forever, though and it's hella less complicated and bleak than it has been and fuckin' hell, bubba, I legit didn't think I'd make it to 18 and instead I saw a piece of the Berlin Wall above the bar of a Bennigan's I was too young to drink at but got to anyway so quit fucking whining.