How to Be An Optimist in America Right Now

It’s a challenge but we can do it

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

If you know my writing (if you don’t, just click on my name) you know I write about the dark side of American politics and climate issues, two big bad topics these days. As dark as though things are, and they are pretty seriously dark, I am not a doom and gloom pessimist and you shouldn’t be either.

There are several Americas out there, maybe dozens or more. There is DC and politics. The Midwest. The Northeast where I live. The places on the frontlines of the accelerating disastrous weather and things like water shortages. The liberal world, the old school conservative world, the MAGA world, and the worlds of those who choose to immerse themselves in manufactured reality, games and social media. And the world of those on the edges, the forgotten ones.

It’s a big country, physically and psychologically. There are places like Texas where many would like to be their own country and places like the woods of Oregon and Idaho where isolationists plot rebellion against the government they see as impinging on their rights.

There are blacks, whites, Jews, Muslims, evangelical Christians, other Christians, Latinos, Asians, LGBQT (I’ve lost track of all the new letters being added) folks, and everything else you can imagine in humanity. A real melting pot, which we were once taught was what made us strong.

Whether you like it or not, it is what made us strong. The land had a powerful people long before we arrived from all over the planet, facing huge obstacles to get here. The indigenous people, Native Americans, are the source of the pre-history of this place.

And we, every one of us an immigrant, many former refugees, form the America of the present. Part of my family came here in 1620 escaping religious persecution in Germany back when religious persecution might have meant burning at the stake.

Not all of that has changed much.

Immigrants still pour in, searching for the dream of America, a place they can live freely and earn a good life through hard work. Unfortunately they also face prejudice and hate, as they always have.