Dick Bernard: Overwhelmed.

Some thoughts

This post began as a draft on May 7, 2017, and included only the next paragraph and the photograph below. That was 18 days ago. I decided to wait with more until the Congressional Budget Office had scored the hastily passed bill “Killing OBAMAcare” (the title of the initial draft of this post). Now you can read the details of the scoring, and some of the summary of the last few weeks news via my favorite blogger, Just Above Sunset, which publishes six nights a week, the most recent reaching me at 2:01 a.m. my time. Your can read the entire post here. Consider a free subscription….

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May 7 – Some day there will be an official iconic photo of the victory scrum at the White House on May 4, 2017. For now, this will do:

(click to enlarge)

Celebrating the first step in replacing Obamacare, White House, May 4, 2017, from front page of Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 5, 2017.

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May 25 – When I saw the “victory” photo, I thought back to endless group photos over the years, long before the days of thousands of images to pick from. In any group were those who didn’t want to be there, but felt obligated to show up; those who were in the picture but deliberately stayed hidden, and on and on and on. That’s what I saw in the photo….

Today I changed the headline of this blog to “Overwhelmed”.

“Overwhelm” has always intrigued me – there must be a “whelm” out there somewhere. I looked the word up. Here is a little discussion.

Well, these are times that people like me do feel “whelmed” to the point of “overwhelmed”: there seems no way to get ahead of the abundant craziness, where “winners” seem to want to rub it in on “losers”. Resolving disputes is for the weak, or so it seems to go. Raw Power rules.

So, our “First Winner” meets the Pope at the Vatican, yesterday; not long before he’s giving affirmation to the President of the Philippines who feels justified in going around executing people presumed to be guilty…. The so-called “Freedom Caucus” in the House of Representatives is another similarly important story.

Going through some old papers yesterday I came across an old handout entitled “Why nobody loves a pessimist”. Take a look. It is here: pessimist002. Well, it is a pessimistic time for people like me, but I remain an optimist about the future.

Then take some time figure out some “doable” things you as an individual can do towards a better world. There are thousands upon thousands of options to be engaged. A week ago the American Refugee Committee distributed a neat pamphlet which laid out the general theme. You can access the pamphlet here, at the top of the page.

POSTNOTE: Pessimistic as the outlook may seem, crank up her optimism and stay in the quest for a better world.

Towards the end of the above referenced Just Above Sunset, there is some important and simple current and credible data: about 4 in 10 Americans consistently still support the President, however, in the past few months those who strongly support him have gone down from about 3 in 10 to 2 in 10.

That leaves 6 in 10 who seem inclined to another way of doing the nation and the world’s business.

That 6 of 10 is all of us, and it’s up to us.

POSTNOTE 2: Just Above Sunset, about NATO and Trump, etc. published early Friday, May 26, here.