Rebellions are built on hope
Once again, we in the US are getting an up-close and personal object lesson in hatred. The attack in Las Vegas is leaving a lot of us speechless, and those of us who can speak can only talk about anger and fear. There's nothing wrong with that - there's fear and anger aplenty to go around, and expressing it, sharing your concerns with the people you're close to, prevents it from festering. However, we need more. Fear and anger alone aren't enough to make the changes we need to see happen - if they were, every oppressive regime and reign of terror would end almost as soon as it began. No, we need conviction, and hope, and optimism. Those are what will drive us to make things happen. Optimism and hope are words that tend to be very brightly colored in our society. They're the sparkly unicorn birthday cakes of words - hearing them makes one think of Care Bears and pretty, slightly dopey sidekicks who are always looking on the bright side. We tend to underestimate t...