Dreaming the World

We had an inch of snow overnight but now, in the early evening, it has mostly melted. The sky is a complex of cloud and milky blue sky. Today we are in the warm sector of our now daily temperature fluxuations. This is very much a La Nina late winter weather pattern.

I came up to the office with a plan to write about a topic that now, having caught up on unread blog posts from others, I no longer quite remember. I’m surer it had something to do with the state of the world today, but it seems to me others have addressed that quite well already.

It struck me earlier today that it is easy to forget that Franklin D. Roosevelt carried out an immense revolution in response to the demands of the Great Depression. He was trying to head off an even larger revolt by the masses of marginalized and suffering citizens, many of whom were WWI vets. The scope of the changes he introduced was vast, but unlike the preset moment, they were designed to lesson the suffering of people and to offer hope for a more just and equitable future.

Of course, many of the oligarchs of the day were not happy, and one can argue that a good many of their ilk have spent the last hundred years or so trying to undo what Roosevelt accomplished.

Of course, things seldom go the way they are planned, as the shapers of innumerable would be revolutions can attest. Still, a few powerful people can do much for good or ill. Of course, good and ill are in the eye of the beholder, but the long trajectory of history has favored those who would foster aid, kindness, and comfort.