Egregious Reader

I struggle to be optimistic. More specifically, at a young 48, I struggle to believe the generations coming after me will make the world better. In some ways, this is not fair, they inherit my world as I inherited my parents world. How arrogant to lay the burden of “the improvement” on their backs. This interchange between Eugene McCarthy, John Callahan and the students at Lewis and Clark University struck me, from 2004. Quick reminder, President Bush was at the beginning of what would become the long war in the Middle East. After his talk there is question and answer. Noting McCarthy’s optimism about the nation during the turbulent, hard year 1968, a student asked if he had become more pessimistic. McCarthy paused, “I’m more apprehensive now,” he said simply, the slight catch in his voice betraying the same quiet alarm I remembered from 1968. To see how far he’d go, I quoted his 1968 election-night remarks in New Hampshire: “People have said that the campaign has brought the young pe...