Where we find ourselves.

[glenatron]

I've been thinking a lot about politics over the last six months, as you might imagine. My political leanings are towards thinking that other people are mostly trying to do their best and that if you treat them fairly then the world could be pretty good but apparently that goes against the prevailing worldview right now

Comments

[clevortrevor]

Really well articulated. I want to believe in progress, slow and faltering as it may be, but it feels like society just trades old problems for new ones, in addition to continually revisiting the same battlegrounds.

[re_vised]

I agree with you.

[puddleshark]

...because at its heart it is an idea, a story about how the past can be recovered, even if that past never happened in the first place...

This. "Make [insert your country name here] great again" is such a pernicious slogan. What's so great about bigotry and a tearing up of environmental protections?

[glenatron]

The thing is that people have an idea of "the good old days" but the thing that made those days good wasn't that the politics were repressive or that minorities knew their place, it was that they were young and the world felt the way it does when you are young and the road stretches endlessly ahead of you.

If I were to start a political movement I think my foundational principle would be "The good old days are gone and we can't bring them back, but with some work we could create some good new days."