A Comfort to the Disenchanted

Friday night I went climbing and out to dinner with a good climbing partner. Saturday I went backcountry skiing with another one of my good climbing partners. In both interactions, politics came up and the conversations were similar. 

We are living in a strange world, where asking a foreign government to dig up dirt on your political opponent is okay. Why don’t we just ask the foreign governments to run political adds for the candidate they support? (That is in fact what Russia actually did on Facebook in 2016.) Among my peers, which is relatively rich, white males in their 30s and 40s, there is despair about the state of our country. We aren’t up in arms or building fall out shelters, but we all seem to have relatives that are. 

Both of my climbing partners had different issues with both parties. And I totally get it. We can't combat extremism with extremism. 

I told both people essentially the same thing, hey it's not that bad. And your relatives that seem to think the world is ending, maybe it is, but just look at history, it's been way worse before now. This isn't Germany in the 1930s or 1940s. This isn't Rwanda in 1994. People in the USA aren't being "disappeared" now. Sure, the news is crazy, and yes people are probably dying from not getting healthcare, but when you really look at the statistics of poverty and disease, the world is getting better. It's going to be okay. And regardless of what happens, Jesus still loves you.