New Year's hopes

For people like me--far-Left Democrats-almost-Socialist-globalists--2017 hasn't been much fun.

Well, that tepid statement doesn't give 2017 the credit it deserves. It was a vivid nightmare of epic proportions!

And it's hard to feel hopeful for this New Year when so much I've believed in--open boarders, tight regulations, environmental measures, reducing the military, being 'one' with Western Europe, NAFTA, progress in racial relations, welcoming the stranger into our midst, Gender equality, full inclusion of GLBT folks, Green Energy, taxing the rich to pay for social programs and social programs themselves--have been threatened if not eroded.

I could say, I suppose, that I hope the Mueller investigation would lead to President He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named's impeachment.

But what would that get me? Mike Pence, for God's sake!!!

I could hope the Democrats make incredible gains in 2018--but gerrymandering and voter suppression weigh against that, at least in a way the changes things.

I suppose I hope that people will continue to organize and be moved to push back against the current waves of un-doing, not just Obama's legacy but the American Ethic and Dream.

For me, ethics and dreams are attached at the hip, con-joined twins. Any 'dream' that doesn't put both ethics and compassion front and center isn't, for me, worth having. And any 'ethical' thought that doesn't include a 'dream' of it being made true isn't worth thinking.

That's been the disconnect for me in the past year. "The American Dream" has been reduced to "Make America Great Again"--which seems to move to the past, not the future, to an "America" that, truth be known, either never existed or, if it did, shouldn't have.

Dreams and Hopes are for what should be true. They are not a retreat into a 'simpler, more basic time' where the lines were clear and what 'was' was more important that 'what needs to be'.

I know, I know, I'm just raving my left-wing, let's all be equal and free and fulfilled jingoism now.

I know that.

And, I know that is my hope for this new year--a possibility that we could all be equal and free and fulfilled. My motto would be "LET'S MAKE AMERICA GREAT AT LAST" since we've never, ever had a time when all of us were equal and free and fulfilled.

It's gotten better over decades of struggle, but there was no point in the past when equality and freedom and fulfillment included us ALL. So, there is no "again" to America's greatness. There's nothing to go back to that was better than the present.

But there is a place to go forward to that would be better: more inclusive, more equal, more free, more compassionate, more ethical, more hopeful, more just, more "more" for all.

That's my hope for 2018, that we as a nation, somehow and against all odds, come to realize that we must form a more perfect future for our grandchildren and those yet unborn, not seek some sentimental reliving of a past that never was.

We must create the Present out of the Future...not the Past.

That 'creation' should be our hope and dream and longing....