The world is fine. Don't give in to negativity.
That's a good thing.
His first presidency was a resounding success for him. He found that he only has a few hurdles left to successfully become a dictator. He neutralized the press with the gish gallop and "lügenpresse"[1], he neutralized his party with the big lie[2], he neutralized the supreme court by installing loyalists and letting them take bribes, he neutralized congress through gridlock. The only real hurdle trump has left is the joint chiefs of staff and you can guarantee his first action as president will be to clean house of people who swore an oath to the constitution and replace them with people willing to ring kiss.
If he is installed we get either a military "coup" to protect the constitution from a domestic enemy or the constitution becomes just a piece of paper in exactly the same way the bible is just a book, venerated but not understood.
You hope the deep state and big business can limit Trump's power, but it doesn't take a lot of effort to find historic precedence that those are hopeful limits rather than practical ones, thinking otherwise is American exceptionalism.
I am pretty confident that most of our founding fathers would disagree with your complacence.
There is nothing all that exceptional about the fact that the US has gone a bit under 250 years without either a monarch or dictator.
Global warming is unaddressed and China is actively building a military to confront the US promising WW3. We have at least 2 major active genocides, one of which might succeed.
If you were to graph corruption, it is clearly increasing. Income inequality is increasing. Congress members are still trading stock. Supreme court justices are still taking bribes... Wages (measured in ability to purchase goods) are decreasing.
I'll happily engage in the thought exercise of thinking about some systemic graphs with a slope that inspires hope.
If America or the world had a dashboard, what graphs would you show me to make me think the world was "fine" or that I should feel positively about the future?
This is exactly the problem with this hopeless viewpoint. just like those wearing rose colored glasses, your shit colored glasses are preventing you from accurately understanding what is going on in the world.
Denial and delusions are the most basic of mental health defense mechanisms, but society cannot work if everyone is in denial or experiencing delusions. It is better for the individuals, but not better for the whole.
I'm not a proponent of being hopeless, but if everyone is living in la la land thinking nothing bad can happen until it does... I don't think that is a good way to conduct society. We have very real unaddressed problems. I think wanting to escape from that is at least understandable if not rational.
I, personally, do not feel hopeless when there are problems, I feel hopeless when other people do not recognize those problems. I feel hopeless when problems are not being addressed.
Historians at ivy league colleges are saying that the forces that made Russia Russia (increasing wealth inequality and decline of rule of law), and the forces that put Hitler into power in Germany (rampant nationalism, stoking the public with a desire for quick solutions, and appealing to the German aristocracy's greed) are both active in America.
So you can moralize about my shit colored glasses, but what if there is actually shit on those glasses, wouldn't they be shit colored?
So, start addressing them. Stop waiting around for everyone else.
> but if everyone is living in la la land thinking nothing bad can happen until it does... I don't think that is a good way to conduct society
Except that is not at all where American society is at. People (especially those chronically online or in front of 24 hour news programs) are expressing some of the most negative views towards the future as they ever have.
Yes, if the world is actually shit then you aren't wearing shit colored glasses. I don't think it is, so I will just laugh at and feel sad for those people who are so down in the dumps. Obviously I might be wrong about this, I guess we will have to wait and see.
If you had that thinking, you'd have missed a great time.
A broken clock is bound to be right eventually.
At some point, the world will end, eventually.
Share of people living in extreme poverty in the world: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/the-share-and-number-of-p...
Child and infant mortality, world: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality-igme?tab=...
Maternal mortality: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/maternal-mortality?tab=ch...
Prevalence of undernourishment in developing countries: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prevalence-of-undernouris...
I think for the world at large, more people, means more consumption, means more pollution and fewer resources per person. Those improvements are likely largely found in pre-industrial societies, and industrialization is environmentally expensive too.
I am willing to believe that while the velocity of global warming is positive, the acceleration of it might be negative. That would be hope inducing, but that's generally not the sense I've gotten.
When someone says the world is on fire, I think they are literally referring to the world being on fire, global warming, or the general rise of authoritarianism/strongmen across the world and the conflict they require to stay in power.
Pick almost anything to see a positive trend.
- Arable acreage globally
- Topsoil depth/health in agricultural areas globally
- Biodiversity as a simple count of distinct species on the planet
- PFAS contamination (by either sheer area or PPM)
- Atmospheric CO2 and methane PPM
- Geopolitical stability (this one's trending down FAST)
- Healthcare outcomes in the US compared to any other industrialized nation on the planet
- Likelyhood that a nuclear weapon will be used in anger in our lifetime
- Percentage of GDP that makes it into the pockets of people that actually work for a living
I could keep going but why bother.