Cynicism and Hope

There’s still some set-up work to be done, but the basics are in place, so tonight is launch night.

I open with a quote:

There was no ice cream in Saddam’s Iraq. This is not a metaphor about a black hole of happiness between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Dictatorships may make life miserable, but you can never truly legislate joy or enforce its absence.
—Moustafa Bayoumi, in How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America

Likewise you cannot legislate hope, even in Obama’s United States.

But you can live it.

Welcome.