Bold Prediction
The next few years will not make America great ("again"), not in terms of happiness, prosperity or security anyway. Not even for white guys. Don't forget to own this one, you assholes.
It occurred to me last night that we're probably witnessing the end of the post-war era in this country. As if there've been a continuum of assumptions and influences that have held sway for the last 30 years and more, that's now letting go and slipping away. Change has been hovering grimly all over 2016, where each celebrity death has felt like the passing of the times. We are hitting ecological turning points. 1945 is escaping living memory, and there aren't going to be too many more baby boomers young enough to throw out as candidates after the new administration has had its turn. I'm not delighted that their saving throw is likely to overshadow a generation (my generation, as per fucking usual), and I fear it's going to be a tough stretch for many of us.
On the other hand, it's been my observation that the millennials have better-developed consciences than we do, and the younger people seem better still. They may have the wherewithal to make a better world for themselves. And they've been getting screwed their entire sentient lives, which has to count something for the motivation. Wherever they take it from here, with whatever resources are still left, it looks like it'll be somewhere different.
My hope, honestly, is that our new president delivers what he has always claimed to be selling: outsider status. He doesn't appear to have a deep understanding of how politics, economics, or the natural world work, and clearly has no use for conservative intellectualism, surrounding himself with something other than the usual undead army of advisors. Maybe he won't be imaginative enough, and maybe he's not even cruel enough, to really gear the system to grinding people down. Maybe he'll content himself to governing only as far as he can see. The status is all that really matters, right? Here's hoping for the least-worst.
