Joey’s Crappy Day

Optimism is a state of mind sweeping the country. However, I think many people call themselves optimists because they are ignorant of the world and human nature. In a word, they are naive. I recently had a conversation with a friend about whether or not we could bomb ourselves out of existence. Of course we have the technology to do so many times over, but our conversation focused on the human aspect. He said that we may have been capable of it 30 years ago, but we no longer have the capacity to bomb ourselves out of existence. I had to disagree. Evolution just doesn’t work that fast on humans. World politics may have changed, but we are the same animals that we were when Columbus set foot in North America. I asked him how he could have such an opinion. He said that he was an optimist. But is he? I submit that his optimism could be more accurately descibed as naiveté, naiveté of human nature and even current world politics. The world is just as dangerous as it was 30 years ago. It may be even more dangerous because we don’t know where our next threat will come from. Perhaps the greatest danger to the United States is the naiveté of its people and leaders. Naiveté masquerading as optimism.