The revolution will not be televised

I can barely stand to listen to/read the news anymore. Not having TV, we've already cut down a lot on news consumption, but I'm finding even the half hour of NPR in the morning, and quick peeks at the NY Times headlines throughout the day, more than I can take. The whole Kerry flap of the last few days has particularly depressed me. Yes, he shouldn't have said what he did, intended or no, but mon dieu, it's eff-ing unbelievable to me how coordinated the right-wing press/Bushies are in their unrelenting and utterly hypocritical attacks. If they can sway people that Kerry's gaffe should be the basis of peoples' general mistrust of Democrats and support for their own so obviously and tragically failing "war on terror" then I give up.

My father, whose radical politics were always the focus of dinner-table conversation in our house, instilled in me a compulsion to remain optimistic. If we don't believe we can improve the world, we're doomed. But even with the prospect of a Democratic win next week, and of an Obama '08 campaign, I simply can't think myself into any kind of genuine optimism.

It terrifies me to find myself becoming so cynical. My father died before Bush was re-elected, right around the beginning of the Iraq war. While I'd long rolled my eyes at his continued insistence that people were fundamentally good, and that revolution was possible, I came to depend on his faith to bolster my own. I'm really missing him right now.