I Want THIS New Years Resolution: More Simple Reasoning and Concern For Human Rights

God, this has been a horrible year for keeping track of the news for logical people who believe in human rights. The war never ends, and this year was the worst of all (so far.)

How can some people still think that wars like these are good ideas? How? Have they no perspective? Have they no understanding of the existence of diplomacy, or the dangers of ethnocentrism?

How could our federal elected officials fail in opposing this obviously horribly-run, nonsensical conflict, from the beginning to the end? It defies the perhaps idealistic image I have in my head of politicians as people who truly think decisions through and try to apply intelligence to deciding what to do.

What country do I live in, I wonder? How can I find a job in another English-speaking (Or Spanish, I know that well enough) country that would let me get a Visa, and, eventually, a citizenship? This decade so far has tested the wills of many Americans who consider running away in a similar vein.

This was also a landmark year for ashamed politicians resigning, but that's not enough for it to be a positive year all-in-all. I don't think I'm a pessimist to say that this year was awful regarding the clueless cacistocracy bungling around in the dark, their each tiny mistake a couple of hundred more overseas brown people dead, a couple dozen more Americans brain-damaged. It made me actually give value, for some time, to some crazy conspiracy theories. (Thankfully I only believed in those for about a month before getting over it and calming down...)

Maybe this year wasn't particularly bad. Maybe it just seems so awful because it's the first year I started obsessively keeping track of news. (Before 2007, I ignored news except for the occasional TV broadcast because it was all too depressing. Now I see that all important things are depressing, in some ways, and it is valuable to keep track of all the exact details this dreary, complex, confusing and beautiful world.)

I will end this, the last post of 2007, with a hope for a better 2008 (I will here show my possibly foolish colors: GO OBAMA! And human rights and diplomacy and logical policies) and a quote from Vonnegut.

And I remembered the Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?"
It doesn't take long to read the Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.
This is it:
"Nothing."