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I have hope [1]

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Date: 2024-06-19  

I’m an old guy. Younger generations would call me a “Boomer” but they would be wrong. Technically I’m a pre-boomer, actually born during WWII.

When I was 18 or so I had a choice; wait to be drafted or enlist. I had some background in electronics and sure as heck didn’t like the idea of marching, so I joined the Navy.

After “A” school I rode a Destroyer as an Electronic Tech. and we went all over the Western Pacific several times. We did patrols off both North and South Viet Nam coasts, went down to Australia and New Zealand, even acted as Flag Ship for Commander, Seventh Fleet in Bangkok.

Now, I had grown up in a White neighborhood with first generation Italian-American parents. They looked down on the Blacks (they often used other words), because so often Italian immigrants were looked down upon by earlier immigrants. I only hung out with white kids in school.

Then I went in the Navy. Boot camp was the first time I had much to do with Blacks, Hispanics, or anyone other than white. Then I went to Electronics school, and worked with others. Ship board I was work mate, bunking compartment neighbor, and Liberty buddy with Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, even an Armenian. We worked together. We learned together.

So now you might say “So What? Yada, yada blah, blah, blah”

And in some ways it is, except, through all that I learned basically we are all alike.

After the Navy I worked building passenger jets and the second stage booster of the Apollo program.

Everything I worked on had been designed and built by people who had come up through the American education system.

Here’s where I’m going: as old as I am I have optimism for my country. We managed to overcome slavery (to a great extent), poverty, disease. We cleaned up our environment , built a country that (even now) millions want to live in and walk hundreds of miles in the hope of getting in.

BUT there are those who want to destroy all of this for their own profit and power.

These have always been with us. The greedy ones. The slave holders and the land owners keeping others down. The greedy one who saw gold or oil on Indian land and killed to get it. In the “Golden Age” when the industrial Barons polluted the country side and forced low wage work — including children.

But we as a country fought our way through that with the help of leaders like Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, even Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Now we have a new cartel of super rich power brokers, most wishing to stay unseen except in their own special group. The politicians seeking power for power’s sake know them, some Supreme Court Justices know them, even a Presidential contender knows them.

They have been trying to destroy our education system for decades, weaken labor unions to the point of useless, subjugate women and minorities, and erase environmental and financial controls.

But I am an Optimist. It may take a decade, maybe even a generation, to overcome all the damage done by the power elite and their political sycophants, but we will do it.

We have an inner strength that comes from being the descendants of immigrants and slaves. The vast majority of this country aren’t after fabulous wealth, just a decent income and a chance to see our kids do better than us. My grandparents saw it. My folks saw it. I see it in my kids. And we see reactionaries trying to end all of this.

I Am An Optimist. I must be, at age 80 I went out and got a 7 month old Siberian Husky. Only an optimist or an old fool would do that.

I don’t think I’m a fool.

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