"Humanity remains dangerously close to the apocalypse. At least according to The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the group of scientists that manages the iconic Doomsday Clock. This year, the hands of the clock were left unchanged from 2018, remaining at an unnerving two minutes to midnight."
"Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin,
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lotta people, but it seems the good die young
But I just looked around and he's gone.
Didn't you love the things they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free,"
"Often, there’s a mismatch between how people perceive their vulnerabilities and how others interpret them. We tend to think showing vulnerability makes us seem weak, inadequate, and flawed—a mess. But when others see our vulnerability, they might perceive something quite different, something alluring. A recent set of studies calls this phenomenon “the beautiful mess effect.” It suggests that everyone should be less afraid of opening up—at least in certain cases."
"No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country, or establish free medical care for every human being. Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration of Independence--an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--be fulfilled."
Born in 1983, it was some 15 years after the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy on June 5, 1968. But I’m a keen observer of sixties and seventies history because I know how impactful of that era is on today’s times. What happened fifty years ago is still relevant as mistakes made then and lessons not learned are still impacting modern mankind.
One observation I can make being of the younger generation is how awful those times where compared today. People can look back at nostalgic black and white photos of era, but they are ignoring the hate and violence that tore through the country during those most terrible of days.
You can listen to the AM radio Shock Jock that is in the White House or his partisan critics but we live in a time that is a whole lot less awful. Politicians are not getting assassinated left and right, our ghettos are not inflame, riots aren’t commonplace in cities, there is no major war or the draft going on, crime is failing today rather than spiking, unemployment is rock bottom and inflation is low.
Life is good and a heck of a lot better today by objective standard than fifty years ago when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy lie on the floor dying. Sure there are some scary dark clouds in the future but the arc of justice continues to bend forward. Most of the progress of earlier generations will not be undone, although it will certainly be tweaked. And there is more to do, but there always is.