I worry a lot about the next generation... the generation that cares about Britney Spears and why Heath Ledger's massage therapist called whatsername. I worry about the kids who work for me having to be told the price people have paid to ensure that they have the right to vote. I cajole them to register and to vote. I browbeat them. I don't really give a royal shit who they vote for... but they have to know about the candidates and the issues and they have to vote. I give them time off on election day to do it. I give them time off to be election judges if they want.
I worry about the price of higher education, and how it's not economically feasible to go to college and study something because it enriches your life.
I worry about where the next generation of teachers is coming from. And sociologists. And archeologists. I wonder what will happen when all the Post Doctoral candidates go into the private sector.
I worry that, given the new bankruptcy laws, and the attacks on unions, and the attacks on abortion, and soon, birth control, and soon, divorce, and lower and lower waged jobs, that the natural family situation will be the father, working three jobs, the mother with a ton of kids trying to scratch out some meagre existence for the family, the inevitable stress leading to the inevitable rise in domestic violence. I worry that the next generation, which will naturally be a large one, will not be taught science or sex ed, and that those who don't go to jail will find the only jobs in the military. And the ones who do go to jail will be tortured.
I worry about what the earth will look like when the temperatures go up, when the oceans rise. I worry about how biodiversity is almost a quaint memory of an era gone by. I worry about the bees going away. I worry about genetically engineered foods. I worry about seedless crops where you have to get next year's supplies from Monsanto.
I worry about how we, as a nation, have become colder to each other, less generous, less forgiving. I worry that we eat too much sugar. I worry that those of us who don't eat too much sugar eat too much sweetener that God alone knows what it will do to your body over the course of a lifetime.
I worry that our phones are tapped, our email read, our google searches analyzed, and that no one seems to care. Hell, I worry that we have a president in office now who would have lost the election had the votes been counted, and that no one seems to care. But let someone cut someone off in traffic, and people seem to care, a lot.
I worry that there's too much rage. And too much apathy.
I worry that we are creating diseases that we have no intention to cure. I worry that we don't even try to talk about insuring our brother and sister citizens.
I worry that there is so much to worry about, on virtually every front, that people feel helpless about everything. I wonder whatever happened to that land of the free and home of the brave, when our freedoms are disappearing daily, and people are told to fear their own shadows.
I worry that the Republican party has become the party of greedy, theocratic supremecists. I worry even more that the Democratic party has become the party of "at least we're not Republicans". I worry that the radical right has pushed the center so far that the center is now so far right that we would never have believed this 30 years ago. I worry that the left cowers in the corner, even when it is that majority, afraid that someone will hit it. And these are supposed to be our standard bearers.
Yes, I worry about tomorrow. A lot.
And, I'll tell you this right now.
The only thing that will save America from the fate that so scares me is an aggressive Democratic Congress, and a Democratic President willing to appoint judges at every level that give a shit about the Constitution, and about We-the-People for whom and by whom the government is supposed to be.
So, whoever wins the Democratic nomination will have me in their corner. Whatever House and Senate races I can help with, I will help with. Because the future right now is bleak enough without people saying I'll never vote for X. Sure, work against X now, but once the die is set, if you're not voting for the Democrat, you're voting for a very very bleak tomorrow.
That's what I think.