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Family Time
Searching For Optimism
We all have a part to play in the type of world my first grandchild will grow up in. One look into his eyes strengthens my resolve to fight.
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it”
– Billy Joel
My daughter was born in a time of optimism. A few years earlier, the Berlin Wall had fallen and the USSR had collapsed. The previous month, Clinton had turned Bush into a one-term President, ending, at least for the moment, America’s lurch to the right. The conclusion of the Cold War offered an opportunity for a peace dividend and a chance to invest in solutions to long-simmering problems on the home front.
Thirty years later, that same daughter has given birth to a son in a world where optimism is harder to come by. The fledgling Russian Democracy was killed in its crib by a new Despot with his sight set on reoccupying countries that had escaped the USSR’s grip. The peace dividend was squandered on tax…
