A clear view of central America – Orange County Register

These sick days, we all have some Debbie Downers in our lives, never hesitate to note that in so many ways we are going to narrowly fall to hell.

And you know what? They may be right.

The pandemic will not give up. The planet itself is in an existential climate crisis – and if we disappear, it will be fine. Instead of the spread of global democracy that we imagined 20 years ago, we will see now, we are on the verge of toppling totalitarian autocrats who are crazy in the truest sense of the word. black – and that’s only in our country.

Someone who knows me about Pollyanna I asked me recently where I am relative to my usual giddy optimism – do I think things will get better or worse in the near future?

“Oh, completely worse,” was my immediate reply. Just speaking of random things in the news that day, I lamented the dangerous Luddite firefighters/EMTs who pretend to protect public health but fail to vaccinate against a deadly disease. deadly diseases that they can easily spread to us. I was referring to the hideous Senator Josh Hawley, who a year ago raised a grimacing fist in support of a mob that ransacked his workplace. A former president supporting a dictator for the Hungarian prime minister. “The ones I do best with tyrants,” he said.

And, no, he didn’t mean it in the sense of urging them not to be tyrannical. So yes, everything has rotted.

Just as it’s best to get up on the horse that threw you, an old newspaperman will sometimes seek solace by flipping over the news. I’ve been hiking and wearing my headphones to listen to the always-prepared KCRW “Left, Right, and Center,” which for decades has been a weekly discussion of the news and an “antidote.” civilized yet provocative for the closed opinion bubble that dominates political debate.” Tuned to listen to some intelligent human species.

And then I was disappointed that host Josh Barro, he of the Immaculate Center, announced he was stepping down after seven years. He is intelligent. He made our hopeless moderators feel we weren’t some dead skunk in the middle of the street.

Barro asked types of lies and cons to make their predictions for the next seven years of American political life.