On this site we tend to concentrate on all of the things that are going wrong in the world. And for good reason -- there are many, many scary things happening right now.
But it is good every now and then to stop and consider what we are grateful for. Some psychologists are even starting to teach that doing a daily gratitude list is an important part of mental health. (Check that link out, it is an interesting story).
So let's try it. What are you grateful for? I'll start with my list, and then I would love to hear yours. Since this is a political site, I will concentrate my list on recent political events
We're still a democracy
I think I might have been even a little bit more nervous about the 2006 elections than most people. My faith in the integrity of our elections was slipping. Computer programmers have quite a wide range of political beliefs, but one thing we are united on is that you can't just blindly trust whatever voting results a computer happens to spit up. Serious researchers have proven over and over how easy it is to hack these machines. It is not just electronic voting machines that are susceptible, optical scanning systems can be easily hacked as well. Princeton researchers have shown that you can even put a virus onto a voting machine to help spread the malicious code to any machine it comes in contact with.
So I was seriously starting to wonder if we even were living in a democracy any more, or if all our votes were just for show. So I can not tell you my relief on seeing us win some very close elections. Things are not yet as bad as I feared. And now that we have a Democratic majority in the house and senate, maybe we can finally pass some legislation that will help clean up some of the most flagrant problems.
We are seeing a exciting, new breed of Democrats
The thing that made the 2006 election especially good was that we are seeing a new breed of Democrats get elected, people like Jon Tester and Jim Webb. I really like the direction these guys are moving the Democratic party towards.
Maybe you don't remember, but back in 2000 the DLC had firm control over the party and Lieberman was our VP candidate. I do not think Lieberman has changed much in the last 6 years really, but we certainly have. Sometimes it takes a near death experience before you get better. During the 2000 election Gore's supporters pointed out that if we let someone like Bush get elected it would be the end of the world as we know it. Nader supporters countered that even so we would somehow survive, and that in the long run Democrats needed to clean house.
Maybe both sides were right. I voted for Gore (it literally made me cry -- I had no illusions about the DLC agenda). And it really was the end of the world when Bush got elected. The last six years have been a constant anguish to me, and yet without the pain that we all shared I do not think we would have the new breed of Democrats that we see standing up now. For example, I doubt very much that someone like Howard Dean would be the national chairman.
Grassroots democracy is growing
I'm grateful for sites like this. We are politically educating ourselves on what is really going on in the world, and we are learning how to organize ourselves to support progressive goals.
I stopped watching network news during the start of the Iraq war when I noticed that my throat was getting hoarse -- I was screaming at the blatant bias and lies too much. Back then I felt like I was screaming alone. I don't feel that anymore.
The tide is turning
My supervisor at work tends to lean right politically. He is not a wingnut, but he tends to echo right wing talking points from time to time. So I was astonished and delighted the other day to hear him announce that he was seriously considering getting a hybrid car. It turns out that he had watched Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" over the weekend, and he had taken its message to heart. He agreed that we shared a collective obligation to fix the problem. My sister, who is married to a wealthy Republican, had the very same reaction after watching the movie. I find this incredibly heartening.
The message is starting the get through. And it sounds like even the Republican presidential candidates acknowledge that we have to do something about Global Warming -- maybe there is still room for hope after all.