George Takei (MSNBC).
George Takei has an open letter at The Daily Beast, and a message many of us sorely need to hear. Just an excerpt from the middle here:
You see, I am ever an optimist. A poll taken in August of voters aged 18-34 showed that the vast majority favored Clinton over Trump—64 percent to 29 percent. That split tells me the same thing that the polls for same-sex marriage told us years ago: Over time, reason and fairness will win out, while bigotry and hatred literally would die off. In 20 years, you will all be in charge, and demonstrate far less appetite or patience for Trump’s brand of nativist rhetoric and race baiting. Trump and his supporters understand they are on borrowed time, and while they may seem resurgent today, this in fact could be their last chance to take control. Our country is rapidly moving on from their discredited and archaic worldview. Perhaps that is why the death throes of their campaign are so spectacular.
You are in many ways wiser to the world than your older counterparts. You came of age in a time where there was greater cause for skepticism, and you’re accustomed to the non-stop barrage of social media. Unlike your parents, you understand that we all live in an echo chamber, and that it is up to each of us to depart from it to hear alternative points of view. You are more likely to place your trust in science and embrace diversity, to reject hate while celebrating love in all its manifestations. You are more focused on racial justice and equality of opportunity than the two generations before you. And contrary to common myth, you are not disengaged. In this election cycle, millions of young voters made their concerns heard and very nearly succeeded in realigning the entire election. Nor are you impractical; even when your favored candidate did not succeed, you stuck by your convictions and goals, and in overwhelming numbers now support the party that will best advance them.
Call me an optimist too. Nice letter.
I’m not an optimist. Not a pessimist, either. Just pragmatic. I don’t see things as rosy as Mr. Takei does, but I’ll take hope where I can find it.
It is hard to imagine how the world has changed in Takei’s lifetime -- as well as how it hasn’t. We’ve still got the same nationalist bullshit, but now we have cellphones and iPads and gay marriage. It’s so random.
The randomness of it all is why I’m not an optimist. Humans just aren’t very good at most of what they do.
I somehow figured that you’d have read the same article, Caine. <3 I'm an unabashed George Takei fanboy for just the reason that I've never seen him lose those rose-tinted glasses. It's mostly because if someone can keep that optimism up and be a good sport about it, I'll definitely smile a little.
Teejaykay:
Yeah, me too. I’ve been a bit in love with him for most of my life, and I really do appreciate the beauty and hopefulness he manages to maintain, but like Marcus @ 3, the randomness of human good really gets to me. We just don’t ever get anything right.
Marcus:
Yeah…this puts me in mind of the post I did about Cable Street, that’s eight decades old, too, and not a hell of a lot has changed. Things change, but they don’t ever seem to change enough.
Yay George! This was a nice finish to the day.
Yeah. I agree with the general sentiment, but I also know that the percentage of people who are still racist assholes, while it does seem to be slowly decreasing, it also seems to be approaching some minimum asymptotically. So while things will slowly get better, there’s always going to be ~25% of the population that seems to be tribalistic, shortsighted, regressive, social domineering….well….assholes.