I have come to the end of my hope.
My political life began when as a kid I cheered John F. Kennedy in his run for the presidency. I had no real idea who he was, but he was young, spoke well, had a beautiful wife, and as a Catholic school kid I was aware that there was an anti-Catholic element to opposition to JFK. So God made me do it.
I was in college when I actually took to the neighborhoods of my Southern California town to talk to voters about my candidate for President – George McGovern. Despite my efforts in that 1972 election the criminal Richard Nixon won 49 states and 520 electoral college votes – a monumental landslide. Senator McGovern said “For many years, I wanted to run for the presidency in the worst way, and that’s the way I did.” It wasn’t funny to me. It was heartbreaking, but I hoped there could be a better outcome one day.
Since then I’ve seen my country blunder from crisis to crisis for six decades, seemingly never learning the lessons of the last war, the last stock market bubble, the last epidemic, the last uprising of its own repressed people. I mostly looked the other way, hoping the nation would find its way back to its founding principles. But that hasn’t happened.
Now my supply of hope has run out.
The ignorant electorate has gleefully put a criminal charlatan in charge, twice. His lackeys in Congress lay supine before him. The best I can say about the loyal opposition is that they are cowards who have watched the destruction mount and – out of concern for their jobs – have done nothing to stop it. Their behavior – at the behest of the criminal – has caused the deaths of millions, the demise of what has passed as healthcare in the U.S., the ruination of all our treasured institutions, and the likely destruction of the planet itself. Future archaeologists (from another planet) will wonder why, with all our resources, we chose to plate everything in gold, rather than work to keep the planet livable.
For ten years I have been saying that the damage done by this regime in Washington is severe but fixable. At first, yes, I was an optimist, my hope for a better world left over from the days when there were still thoughtful men and women of integrity who entered government with a commitment to help.
As things developed I began to think “It’s fixable, but it will take generations to repair the damage, and we and our grandchildren will all live in pain during that time.”
But as Project 2025 rolled on, enabled by millions of MAGA voters, reveling in its cruelty, stupidity and ignorance, abetted by both houses of Congress, a despicable White House cabinet of selfish, damaged souls, and even the Supreme Court itself, I came to the end of my hope:
The damage is permanent.
This current regime has opened the door to hell and shown us the pleasures and rewards of hatred and violence. The ringleader may not be the richest man in the world, but he has acquired ungodly wealth and power without doing anything to earn it. A future leader in the White House might try to turn things around, but the door will still be open, the flames beckoning.