Things Change.
Today, I carried a 32" CRT television set down to the basement. The thing weighed almost 100 lb. My wife's aunt, who passed away not long ago, named us to receive her LCD HD television. It's just a 26" model, but that's no matter. What struck me was the difference...the change...between the bulk and heft of the two devices, not to mention the dramatic improvement in the technology. I even hooked up rabbit ears to it, and let it find all the local digital channels here in the Twin Cities in MN. 21 of them, in all. I haven't received TV over the air since the 1970s. We won't use that capability unless the cable's out, but it's cool, anyhow.
Things change. Who could have imagined a high-definition LCD television in the 70s? Who could have imagined, at the same time, a black man as the President of the United States? Who could have imagined that LGBT couples would be able to marry in several states, with more to come, or that a gay man or lesbian woman could openly serve in our military?
So, we have all those things today, in 2012. I'm a lot older than I was in the 1970s...older than I care to think about, frankly. I've seen a lot of things change. I could not have imagined posting on DU then. I could not imagine that we'd be watching data come back from Mars that might indicate that life could have existed there. When I was in High School, in the early 1960s, contraceptives were illegal in California for unmarried people, and girls in my class had to sneak around to have a safe abortion. Fortunately, there was a kind doctor in the small town I grew up in who would do them if you knew that he would.
We have a black President, for pete's sake, and he's almost certain to win a second term. The old angry white men are my age or older now, and they'll soon be dead, as I will, I suppose. The young people who are new voters don't have the same crap in their heads. They think nothing of electing a black man to the Presidency, and can't imagine why LGBT people shouldn't marry if they want to.
Things change. They will continue to change. Things will go up and down, and there will be good times and bad times. The trend, however, is positive. Many things are better today than they were in the past, and there's promise that they'll continue to get better.
I'm an old fart, but I'm still an optimist. I've seen lots of crappy stuff since I was born, and I've seen a lot of that crappy stuff go away. There was a huge polio scare when I was 5 years old. Polio isn't scary any more. We have medical technology that can give an 86 year old man new hips so he can still work on his tractor. He shouldn't, but that's his life, and he does. He's my dad, and he's 88 now. My mother, who is also 88, got a stent in a cardiac artery a couple of weeks ago, and is back out pruning her rose bushes. All covered by Medicare. They'd have been dead had they been that age just 40 years ago. No question.
Things change. I've seen them change for the better. I believe that will continue into the future.
GOTV 2012, everyone!
= new reply since forum marked as read
at least we hope that things have changed since 1917. 
Nice post.
