I met that quote in historian Kevin Leman’s post about the end of the Reconstruction era. Douglass: “You want to know whether the hour is one of hope or despair. I have no time to answer this solemn inquiry at length or as it deserves, and will content myself with giving you the assurance of my belief. I think the situation is serious but it is not hopeless. On the contrary, there are many encouraging signs in the moral skies. l have seen many dark hours and have yet never despaired of the colored man’s future. There is no time in our history that I would prefer to the present.”
I’m quoting that not to hand-wave the massive problems that the Toddler and the Republican Party have inflicted on us (and it’s not like we didn’t have problems before). The situation is serious .. but it’s not hopeless. And if Douglass could preach that message, in a very dark time for black America, giving up hope now is not the way. The road is slow, we don’t know the path and it might end up going nowhere good. Even so. In that spirit, some good news and some good quotes:
Here’s a win: “Back in 2020, after George Floyd’s murder, the school board voted to rename Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School. They became Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary respectively. Four years later a newly elected board reversed that decision and brought the Confederate names back. They never really explained why.
When the case went to trial, the 2024 board members simply refused to testify about their motives, hiding behind legislative privilege. Urbanski saw right through this move. He emphasized that this case was unusual because the students were not trying to erase names that had been in place for decades. They were challenging a board’s decision to undo its own predecessor’s work, a predecessor that had already admitted the original names were discriminatory.”
The Toddler doesn’t want to admit it but crime is at record lows.
Anti-Muslim bigot Andy Ogles lost his re-election primary.
“Every time someone tries to sell you on the idea that there is something we can do, without cost, that harms other people, realize that they are lying to you.” — from a Courtney Milan thread about why violence is a bad solution.
A Texas educator lost a shot at high school principal gig after calling ICE on a graduation ceremony.
Firing people for the non-crime of criticizing the late Charlie Kirk has proven a costly mistake.
As this blog post says, I’m inclined to think of the ratcheting of Republican crazy only getting worse, never better. At the link, Wyoming says otherwise.
I’ve also seen a surprising number of left-wing blog posts the past year every time a Toddler-backed candidate wins — OMG, it’s still his party, other Republicans only live in it! Which ignores the long history of many of his picks failing to win — a pattern reconfirmed in this year’s primaries.
By missing a court deadline, the administration is now required to wipe out 170,000 student loans.
Inspiration: “The Second Reconstruction of the King Years may have ended, but we do not and cannot yet know the rest of the story or how what new “endings” and new beginnings are yet to come. It’s tempting, and depressing, to assume that the story of the Second Reconstruction will parallel the story of the first for another generation. The parallels, so far, are dismayingly close, with the federal government and the Supreme Court playing the same role they played the first time around, abandoning and betraying the promise of full democracy. But that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to generations of the new Plessy regime that John Roberts and Sam Alito dream of imposing. We are here, and here is Not Good. But here is not the end of the story. If we forget that, they win.”
“As much as we humans may be utterly dependent on saving grace, we also seem to require some measure of saving face. The ability to tell yourself that — whatever else you misunderstood or voted for or identified with or otherwise got terribly, horribly wrong — you at least were “unequivocally opposed” to this facility, for whatever reason, is the kind of face-saving knowledge that sometimes makes redemption seem more like a possibility that you might survive and, thus, more like a possibility that you might consider choosing.” — from a post about using practical arguments against ICE (or whatever) rather than ethical ones.
“When you do not choose a side, one tends to get chosen for you.”
“That is the invitation of the world that we are called to be a part of, to help create. To do it as a part of the life of this community, part of the larger community that we are a part of. To use our gifts in whatever way God has called us, to use them to care for those around us. It’s not a world where we will be particularly welcomed well, where compassion, joy, kindness, treating everybody as if they deserve health and shelter and education. That is a world that challenges the way power works around us, but it is the world that we are invited to be a part of.”
And here’s a post of mine from right after the Toddler took office again, with more inspiration in it.
