Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Let’s inject a bit of optimism, shall we?

Y’see, it occurs to me that in so many places the takeaway from news is that we’re all doomed. Politically, financially, environmentaly, we’re so hosed that it just isn’t worth the effort any more. This has led to countless impressionable younger folks swearing off having babies, or just swearing off life. The endless doomsday propaganda forced into the heads of those younger and more experienced than us old farts has all but created a generation of manic depressives who look at a brilliant new morning and see nothing but the oncoming storm. They opt to check out because those that mold them have told them that no matter what they do they’re screwed, so in truth, who can blame them?

Nihilism is an emotional ideology that sickens me. But, you know what: if you want to be the kind of prick who believes in nothing but the futility of it all, you go right ahead, and kick your can all the way into oblivion, you oven-headed putts. But don’t start spreading your vile anti-creed to the kids who aren’t yet aware enough of the glories of life to see your shit for what it is. Screw you. Keep it to yourself, and let them mess their lives up in their own way. Mush mouthed, self-righteous, triggered bastards.

What I can see from just a cursory glimpse of the propaganda machine that falsely promotes itself as news is a whole faction of the populace that’d rather let it burn than be wrong about something. They will do whatever they can to remove a sitting President because he’s f*cked up their elitist status quo. God help us if anyone ever takes a successful pop at the Donald. There’d be blood in the streets. Because that selfsame faction of the populace would take to the streets shouting and cheering like it was the day the Berlin Wall fell, and the remaining, infinitely more sane, population of this greatest country in the world will see red. Hand to God I hope this never happens, but they’re trying so hard to make it so that I wonder how far optimism has to stretch before it becomes delusion.

Contrary to (supposedly) overwhelming popular opinion, I feel that things are going just fine. After eight years under the racist, anti-American yolk of Saint Barry, there’d have to be a pretty dark drop to make me see things as anything other than better. My family is in good shape, as are my friends, and the vast majority of folks that I know. Interestingly enough the only folks that I know that are having a hard time of it are the ones who got fat suckling off the government teat under Barry, and who are now looking at a world where they potentially have to—gasp!—take care of their own shit. Welcome to the human race, pal. Get a helmet or get off the field. It’s called life: live it.

Things are better. The country is becoming more financial solid every day. Our troops are being slowly removed from foreign conflicts that we never should have gotten involved in in the first place. The Communists (I refuse to call them Democrats any more: there can be no doubt in even the thickest head just where their political loyalties lye) are losing their minds more every time one of them talks. Yep: getting better.

See, for a long time I was worried about just what kind of future we were barreling into. For year I was certain that we were actively entering Philip K. Dick’s bleak tomorrow with no chance to pull back for the cliff. I’d hoped for Heinlein’s, but we as a species just aren’t that good, I fear. Still, what I see now might not be a golden utopia of Constitutional freedom, but it isn’t necessarily going to be a fascist wet dream either. For the first time in a long time I find myself thinking like Sara Conner at the end of the last (good) Terminator movie. I’m not sure where we’re headed.

As a youth, and well into my whiny 20’s, I was a solid pessimist. I just figured we’d do each other in, that sooner or later the comet would win, and that I’d be lucky to see 35. I’m looking down 40’s tailpipe now, and see a bit of silver lining. ’Bout a decade back, my incredible wife and I ushered the first of two perfect girls into the world. They give me as much hope for the future as anything else. Though it’s not for them that I find myself being bright and shiny. They help, don’t get me wrong, but I find that my whole outlook has shifted from shitty browns to brilliant light.

See, we’ve survived this far. We’ve made it through the population boom that was supposed to have us all starving and cannibalistic and living on top of each other a few decades back. We made it through the supposedly inevitable nuclear war with the soviets that’d have each of us roasting at ground zero. We’ve made it through more than a decade of “Seven more years” environmentalist doom and gloom porno, and I suspect that we’ll make it through seventy more. Because there’s more of us looking at the incompetent powers that shouldn’t be and saying, “Y’know what: you’re full of it.” The wool might not have been pulled from the eyes of all of us, but there’s enough of us who see them for the crap mongers that they are to shake their unearned power center to its core.

So, again: things are getting better. Overpopulation, nuclear war, global warming, and Commie incompetence haven’t done us in yet, and I don’t figure they will. Because we’re Americans, and even after more than 200 years that still stands for something. Grit, God-willing, and a refusal to stay down. We don’t roll over for monsters, and when the fight comes we finish it. So, even if there’s a couple of bad years ahead as the lamenters of the late USSR do their best to instill in us their amoral, anti-human garbage ideologies before finally (and much belatedly) shuffle off this mortal coil, we’ll come through it ok. It’s what we do, and they just can’t help but hate that.

That all being said, I’ll just close with some advice. Keep it together folks. Look at the bright side. Wrong is wrong, no matter how many bastards cry at you that it’s right. You owe no one anything by proxy. We’re doing just fine. Keep living your life right, if for no other reason than because it just irks the bastards. No matter how grumpy you are, someone loves you: so be worth it. ’Bout sums it up.

Have a better one.