A time for optimism

Now that politicians are filling our senses with their visions of gloom and despair on a marathon basis, we wonder where the real America lives and how its bare-bones citizenry is coping with a world gone askew. This observer looks backward to full splendor during the time we were preeminent in the earth. Before we were afflicted by ambitious little men who seemed to care more for their place in history than their obligation to serve this wonderful people. We looked ahead to "morning in America." We were still thrilled at the end of the Cold War. The specter of a nuclear cloud obliterating our land was a bitter memory, but we went to work to use the fresh new confidence we had in ourselves.

We are stunned with dismay over runaway gasoline prices and we suspect a gigantic kind of chicanery on the part of selfish speculators who make obscene profits at the expense of ordinary folk who simply cannot afford to drive to work -- those who still have jobs. We have all been through the cycles of boom-bust, bull-to-bear markets and the woes of inflation in many times during our past. We have been given succor by realizing the economic machine that drives us is not broken but we can bring it to mend.

We are engaged in a two-front war which careens on unabated in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a definite sense that Iran also is an enemy in that unstable part of the world. We have crippled our state of indebtedness, brought on by the profligate spending of a president and congress seemingly engaged in a vast plot to bankrupt our county. Our armed forces are strained to the limit, and we are in the sad state we cannot well afford to build them up again soon. At home, our diplomatic service is apparently unable or unwilling to parley with friend or foe either.

We are a tough and splendid people, given to trust and optimism despite the failings and the affairs that must not impair our sense of hope and faith in one another, beseeching the help of Almighty God. We'll make it through -- together!