January 1, 2008
What's on the Horizon?
Versailles, September 2007
Hard to know, isn’t it? The forecast for the near future is, at best, unsettled. New Year’s morning, here in Brooklyn, is a stormy affair, wind driven rain hitting my windows, dark clouds rolling in over the Gowanus Expressway.
What I’d like for ’08 is an end to governance by over-simplification and diplomacy by heedless aggression. It is, I know, a lot to ask for, but it’s an election year.
Back in the 1990s, I got so tired of hearing Bill Clinton’s promise to “build a bridge to the 21st century.” In retrospect, however, after spending the past eight years under an administration that has instead built a trap door to the Middle Ages, that campaign slogan sounds so enlightened, so sunny.
My hope for ’08 is to once again live in the sun. I want to live in a country with a federal government that is the bridge-building, rather than the bridge-burning, kind. I’m not endorsing Clinton, Edwards or Obama — any one of those three will do — but my wish for the New Year is that we will get ourselves out from under the dark cloud that has hung over us since the election of 2000 and most especially since September of 2001.
Everything else is secondary.
Happy New Year!
(And if you need a little hit of optimism this New Year’s Day, try Radio David Byrne.)