Now I’m Really Depressed

Every once in a while just reading through the latest news sends me into a tailspin of depression. The funny part about it is that it’s not usually death and destruction that does it. As terrible as it sounds, I’m used to war, natural disaster and sudden tragedy. It’s usually the little things that get to me.

My philosophy is that it’s the undercurrent of the world that determines whether things are getting better or worse. It’s the little things that determine whether the zeitgeist is proceeding in the right direction or whether we’re rewinding back towards the dark ages.

So, what are the stories that have me in a funk? The first is that Iraq has a new national flag emblazoned with the words “God is Great” in Arabic. Oh yeah, that bodes well for the future.

The second is that the latest AP poll shows Barack Obama barely defeating John McCain and Hillary Clinton actually in what amounts to a dead heat with him. I don’t understand how, after the catastrophe of George Bush, anyone could consider voting Republican in the next election. At least part of the disaster of the Bush administration is the result of a Republican party that has allowed itself to be influenced by a far right philosophy that is incompatible with American Democracy. You elect another Republican before the party re-establishes its moderate roots and you’re just asking for another disaster.

The third is that I read the story on last night’s Emmy Awards and don’t have the faintest idea who these people are that won all of the awards. I must really be getting old.

Ignoring the getting old thing for a minute, civilization seems to be winning on all fronts but one. Religion continues to act like a millstone around our necks that, at the very least, retards progress, and in the worst case scenario threatens to drag us back down into barbarity. The vision of a moral dark age dominated by religions which have access to weapons of mass destruction rather than simply knives, swords, bows and torture devices is truly a depressing one.