January 8, 2020

I offer the inimitable words of my old buddy Steve.

Draw a line of human social development starting thirty thousand years ago -- it goes up. Whole lives, whole generations spent going down, going up, living through the bounce. But it goes up over time, steadily.

And it goes up from the smallest of things. Human hope, usually put into words but not always. People that were treated cruelly that raise kind children. Bits and pieces and lost moments of the Better Humans, swept away by the rending darkness of the Ancestor -- but those stories live to inspire future generations to overdo the Better Human thing.

I saw the first black president happen, twice, and the first female president though they could not stand it and took her from us. I saw rights for many seriously disenfranchised minorities enter the conversation if not yet into permanent law. I see the younger people skewing politically way left, and in a solemn and informed manner that shames my lost generation.

We are living better lives than 99.99 percent of all human beings that have ever lived. Democratic freedom is under attack, and the disproportionate response of time will be that this story rescues the future. The villains are clear, the momentum of history is true (even if we feel it as darkness), and I love that I get to be here and serve as one of the truly faithful Americans that WILL NOT GO GENTLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT.

We'll save ourselves, and our children, and their children, and the world, and all the creatures of this world and we'll emerge to be Better Humans after all -- I do believe this.

And you help. Just by being here.

Thanks for that.