Come and Join the Living

As much of a bleeding-heart liberal as I am, I'm not a Kumbaya-singing dude who saves trees while sending whales to college. It's not who I am, I promise you. Somehow tonight I was listening to Peace Train by Cat Stevens. Like anybody else, I've heard it 1000 times; but for some reason tonight, it really hit me. Not because I started dreaming oh gee, here comes a train of flowers and my gay lover!! like Republicans think we do all day. Rather, all of a sudden I started noticing what the fuck he was opening each verse with...and this was 1971.

Now I've been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come...
Oh I've been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one

In the midst of Vietnam. Nixon. No end in sight. The ridiculous optimism, foolish even. At every moment, this guy thinks he's gonna find the sunlight. Guess what Cat? People kept dying, the whole thing kept getting worse!! I find myself in the midst of this scenario, Bush/Iraq, and I offer no optimism. Zero. And that's a character fault of my own. I see darkness always; I could take a lesson from Cat. Why would someone like Cat Stevens possibly think for one minute that things were looking up?

Then I think about who we have as our next President. And I get it. And it's not a lovey-dovey hippy thing. It's a cold, rational roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-dirty-thing: it's the coolness of Kennedy, the hope of Kennedy, plus the pragmatism of Reagan. In other words, what the world needs now. Or, in simpler terms: stay cool. Period.