Couple weeks ago, a fellow columnist asked his friends to come up with some good news.
I’ve been scratching my head ever since.
And now, after some painstaking effort, I’ve finally come up with some good news.
There’s a definite sense of release, bordering on relief, to see the end of a pitched, angry, no-holds-barred political battle that raged for the last five years. No team can be on defense for five years, fending off withering attack after attack, without being plum exhausted. It’s enough to wear a guy out.
I wake up in the morning these days without that sense of dread I had for the last five years, wondering what the guy I voted for said, posted or tweeted while I was asleep.
I liked the impressive results the guy I voted for achieved (a booming stock market, record low pre-Covid unemployment, cutting regulations, spurring development of multiple vaccines in record time, and more), but I wasn’t on board with everything he said.
He couldn’t resist walking into at least one screaming buzz saw of controversy a day, sometimes two. If I listened to him talk for any length of time, I’d come up with multiple things I wished he had said differently. I knew what his mortal enemies on the left and in the news media would do with the verbal ammunition he served up to them.
Folks either loved the guy or hated him. There wasn’t much middle ground. Something about him served as a catalyst that made a sizable percentage of Americans erupt like Vesuvius at the mere mention of his name.
It’s nice, these days, waking up without that dread. When I see this new president of ours speaking, I can’t understand much of what he says when he’s wearing two masks, and not much more when he isn’t. But hey, if he makes some boneheaded comment, I don’t have to defend it. Not my problem. No skin off my, well, head.
It’s very refreshing.
Likewise, it’s good news that my liberal friends don’t have to be hysterical anymore.
It can’t be easy maintaining that level of Chicken Little hysteria for five years, but they went above and beyond the call of duty.
Who wouldn’t need a long vacation after believing for so long that Beelzebub was our president, that he would never leave office, and that he was Putin’s twin, separated at birth?
The poor dears need a rest.
It’s also good news, I guess, that for some reason the government keeps sending us money. My wife and I are on Social Security, and we always saved for our retirement years.
But money from the government keeps showing up in our checking account. First there was $1,200 for each of us. Then $600 for each of us. And now it looks like we’ll be getting another $1,400 each, even though we wouldn’t miss any meals without it.
Nobody ever asked if we needed it. If they had, we would have told them to give that $1,200, then $600, and now maybe $1,400 to people who really need it, who have lost jobs, who are hungry, or who have been forced to close their businesses.
Our government isn’t smart enough to figure out who needs money and who doesn’t. So they just give (borrowed) money to everyone.
Turns out, many Americans are simply saving the money, instead of stimulating the economy by spending it. Proving they have a lot more common sense than their government.
One bit of good news was easy to come up with – the birth of a brand new grand daughter in late November, who I’m hoping won’t someday get stuck with the bill for the $1,200, then $600, and now maybe $1,400 deposits her grandma and grandpa found in their checking account.
She’s perfect in every way, a little diary with no writing on any of the pages yet, and great parents who will make sure those pages are filled with all the right stuff as she grows up.
Maybe she, or some member of her fresh new generation, can do a better job running this joint than we have.
Now that would be some good news to report.
Dave Simpson can be contacted at davesimpson145@hotmail.com
