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July 29, 2005
Pat Sajak on Optimism
I just made a brief spot by Pat Sajak's place, where he had a word or two to say about optimism from his latest vacation:
I’ve recently returned from an extended European vacation which included a virtually total information blackout. I carried no computer and no cell phone...
...
However, this strange juxtaposition of my information cut-off while being surrounded by growing signs of a connected world resulted in a long-absent feeling upon my return: optimism. It’s something I hadn’t felt in years. Optimism about the world and my kids and their futures. It’s something 9/11 had knocked out of me. It’s something the daily drumbeat of 24-hour news channels had kept me from feeling. How could we survive in this world where everyone hates us and everyone is out to get us?
Well, it turns out everyone doesn’t hate us. Most people are too busy taking care of their families or working or shopping to care much one way or the other. Without the prisms of CNN and “The Twin Times” of New York and Los Angeles to remind me of how terrible a country we live in and how despised we are, I had to rely on real people and actual events to show me the world, and it seemed to be a much more hospitable place.
As for the “wired” gondoliers, even they fueled the optimism. It's becoming more and more difficult to keep a society in darkness. As that tool of dictatorships and despots and thugs is taken away, it will become impossible to hold the next generation in check. As people-to-people communication seeps into places like North Korea, goofballs such as Kim Jong Il will find it harder to convince people they are world-class athletes or brilliant scholars. It will be harder for terrorists to justify their means. And, yes, it will be harder to portray America as Satan incarnate.
Politics by Dan at July 29, 2005 02:03 PM