America is so hopelessly backwards and reactionary compared
with the rest of so called civilized world, that it sometimes gives me a
feeling of hopeless depression (although not the clinical version). The lack of
caring for fellow human beings has resulted in totally unacceptable gaps in
income, money having an incredible level of influence in politics, millions and
millions of people without adequate (or any) access to healthcare, a Supreme
Court that says corporations are people and money is free speech, education
being hopelessly unequal, depending on where you live, an extremely inadequate
safety net, an extreme level of gun violence that will never decrease as long
as the NRA (read: gun manufacturing and gun seller lobby) has a totally
undeserved level of influence, ignorant religious theories are given equal
standing with science, etc., etc., etc.
But maybe there is hope after all. Until 1967, marriages
like mine and my wife’s were illegal in many states, African-Americans of my
generation still remember separate drinking fountains and many, many other inequalities
and atrocities. We now have an African-American president, although a far too
conservative one for my taste. Gays will soon have full and equal rights. More
and more people understand that the fairy tale from a couple of thousand years
ago is just that, a fairy tale. So maybe this country will eventually join the modern
day world of rationality and logic. But boy is it going slowly!
