2076

[DV1]

I've lived through several administrations in my life. I can remember as a child having an "I Like Ike" button. I can't remember where I got the button or what it really meant.

After 12 of those administrations, including Gerald Ford's, it has become clear that the same playbook in terms of what to tell people, the voters, is always the same. The same promises though updated a little to seem more current. The voters in one way or another expect a politician to become a savior, someone that's going to part the sea of troubles and lead everyone to the promised land. But that sea is still there and some would say even more turbulent than before. They talked about making things better for future generations, and here many of us are that generation.

When it was just 3 television channels and newspapers there was at least some time to get away from it, deal with your immediate, personal concerns of life. But nowadays it's a 24/7 gauntlet of politicians, pundits, internet 'patriots', and a populace that seems partly cultish, partly fearful, and some who seem like they're just sleepwalking. Do I wish for those earlier times? No, not at all. I guess I've wished for a better understanding and assessment by people of the lessons learned(?) from history. Here we are in the 21st century and many are acting as if they were in the 1950s, or earlier.

I won't be around then, but I hope that by 2076 there will reason to celebrate in some measure all that this country, and the people who have passed on and those alive now, have struggled for.

I'm optimistic it will, but it's not an easy-chair type of expectation. The work continues.

[KPN]

1. At 73, I'm optimistic too. Two steps forward, one step back -- or that's what I like to think.

The reality is that is only true on some fronts in these past 45-years or so. My kids point that out to me all the time. Their cohort is struggling financially -- education, housing, health care and in the last couple or so years even food is unaffordable for too many.

My kids and their friends do not share my optimism, or at least in the secure and assured way I and my wife do. We've made our life and are comfortable. We were able to do that because with a little hard work it was affordable. It being higher education, home ownership, health care ... and now retirement. My kids say they won't be able to retire at the age I did -- 11 years ago at 62. I hope they are wrong and we intend to save much of our retirement savings to pass along to them so that they might have a chance to enjoy the same sort of life I and my wife have. We shall see.

My kids aren't optimistic. I am. But it's because of them. I have great optimism when I listen to the younger generation ... more like generations now I guess. In them, I see reason to hope and believe that they in 2076 will have done a better job than we.