Don’t let Trump’s MAGA movement convince you that life in America is getting worse. Unless you are a straight white man, your prospects and opportunities in life are much better now than they were 20, 50, 100 years ago. Lets not forget that people of color, women, trans people, and queer people are only just starting to have the full rights of citizenship.
Sometimes when I’m feeling low about our political situation, as I often am these days, I say to my partner “I wish I wasn’t born in these Bad Times” to which he responds “What other times would you want to be born in?”. Then we go down the following thought pattern.
I am a mixed race woman working as a software engineer at a tech start up. I love my life, and none of that would have been possible in most decades before this one. My grandmother, a natural born scientist and eventual doctor, was not able to take AP Biology in high school because her segregated school did not offer APs and she could only take one course a semester at the white high school. My parents would not have been able to get married before Loving vs Virginia in 1967, and if they had been in Alabama in the year they were married, their marriage would have been illegal (interracial marriage was not officially legalized until 2000).
Further, my sister and her girlfriend (if all goes well) will be able to marry. Ten years ago, that would not have been an option for them (same sex marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015). My other sister, a fiercely competitive rower, would not be able to row because her college only started their rowing program in 1971. The high school we both went to, by the way, admitted the first black student in 1964 so neither of us would have been able to form the wonderful relationships and love of learning we got there. When my dad was one of the first black people at his private majority white high school, he was regularly called slurs. That fucking sucks.
Don’t romanticize the past. Yes, the cost of living has gotten too high compared to wages. We need to redistribute wealth. But on the whole, for most of us, life is actually getting a whole lot better with every year that passes. The idea that it’s getting worse was cooked up by republicans to pull us back into the past. Giving up hope to lament how awful the world has gotten is intellectually lazy– there is no prize for pessimism.
Don’t let Trump’s MAGA movement convince you that life in America is getting worse. Unless you are a straight white man, your prospects and opportunities in life are much better now than they were 20, 50, 100 years ago. Lets not forget that people of color, women, trans people, and queer people are only just starting to have the full rights of citizenship.
Sometimes when I’m feeling low about our political situation, as I often am these days, I say to my partner “I wish I wasn’t born in these Bad Times” to which he responds “What other times would you want to be born in?”. Then we go down the following thought pattern.
I am a mixed race woman working as a software engineer at a tech start up. I love my life, and none of that would have been possible in most decades before this one. My grandmother, a natural born scientist and eventual doctor, was not able to take AP Biology in high school because her segregated school did not offer APs and she could only take one course a semester at the white high school. My parents would not have been able to get married before Loving vs Virginia in 1967, and if they had been in Alabama in the year they were married, their marriage would have been illegal (interracial marriage was not officially legalized until 2000).
Further, my sister and her girlfriend (if all goes well) will be able to marry. Ten years ago, that would not have been an option for them (same sex marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015). My other sister, a fiercely competitive rower, would not be able to row because her college only started their rowing program in 1971. The high school we both went to, by the way, admitted the first black student in 1964 so neither of us would have been able to form the wonderful relationships and love of learning we got there. When my dad was one of the first black people at his private majority white high school, he was regularly called slurs. That fucking sucks.
Don’t romanticize the past. Yes, the cost of living has gotten too high compared to wages. We need to redistribute wealth. But on the whole, for most of us, life is actually getting a whole lot better with every year that passes. The idea that it’s getting worse was cooked up by republicans to pull us back into the past. Giving up hope to lament how awful the world has gotten is intellectually lazy– there is no prize for pessimism.
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